


Admit Seven

by gala_apples



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Adding To A Poly Relationship, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Theatre, Blow Jobs, Compersion, Dirty Talk, Established Relationship, F/M, First Kiss, M/M, No Covid, Orgy, Polyamory, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:35:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28040055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gala_apples/pseuds/gala_apples
Summary: Richie’s plan for this year’s theatre festival is simple. Go in, get butts in his seats, see a play or two with his boyfriends in his spare time, and get out with a load of cash and a hundred new podcast subscribers. Things rapidly get more complicated than planned.
Relationships: Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon/Ben Hanscom/Eddie Kaspbrak/Beverly Marsh/Richie Tozier/Stanley Uris, Mike Hanlon/Richie Tozier/Stanley Uris
Comments: 13
Kudos: 21
Collections: Poly Losers Club Fic Exchange Vol.3





	Admit Seven

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Zwow for the Poly Losers Club fic exchange. They wanted a AU in which the Losers Club meets for the first time as adults, and I knew I was fucked because I LOVE building AUs. Not that this one was particularly difficult. For the last fifteen years I've been a huge Fringe Festival patron, so the second I was like Richie...does comedy... Bill...writes... it all just clicked, and I started typing like a madman. Set in a 2020 without Covid, because it stole this year's festival from me, and I'm a sad panda.

_“I figured out I was pan pretty early. You’d think early knowledge would give me some kind of wisdom. But no. Wisdom need not apply, we will not be accepting any more resumes at this time.” Richie says in his corporate drone voice._

_“Because of it, my life has been a series of awkward coming out encounters. I remember telling my best friend in junior high. My group of friends, we cursed constantly. Thought it would make us cool. Here’s my After School Special PSA from me to you: it did. Swearing is the freakin’ tits, it makes every sentence far more descriptive. In a world of ‘oh, no’s’, be the person who shouts ‘donkey nutsack’.”_

_“But back to Chris. I forgot how I slighted him, it’s been lost to the sands of time and also the weed I smoke, but I know it was enough to get him to yell at me. Specifically, he yelled-” Richie stretches the mic away from his face and pulls it back in “‘you buttfucking son of a bitch!’.”_

_“I said, and I quote, ‘sometimes’. I mean, I wasn’t. I was a goddamn twelve year old. I hadn’t gotten my first kiss, never mind ridden down the chocolate tunnel. But it got the point across.”_

***

Venue Three is one of the best of the festival. It’s air conditioned. Being an actual theatre, not a makeshift location, it has real seats rather than folding chairs. It has an actual stage and wings, not taped off parts of the floor and plywood planks. It has a capacity of three hundred- technically five hundred but the shittier seats are roped off. Most importantly for Richie, the Mayer Performance Centre fits his technical specs. You can’t lie about that sort of thing, you’d be found out immediately, but once he won a spot in the December lottery for one of the twelve main venues, did Richie add music and a PowerPoint just to necessitate a venue that could run his tech? Maybe. He’s a shrewd bastard. Stan would be proud of him, even if Mike wouldn’t be.

There are three days of tech rehearsal before the festival starts. It’s up to each venue’s tech manager to decide how that parcels out. This year Richie’s been told to come for nine am. It’s a brutal hour of day. He doesn’t know how Stan and Mike can stand it. Even his noon show next Thursday will be a stretch for his personal circadian rhythm, and at least then he’ll be able to stop by the food trucks for a watermelon lemonade and mini doughnut breakfast. Right now it’s just a too sunny normal Monday, and he probably should have grabbed a bagel from the bread box but he’s an idiot. A tired, starving idiot.

He joins the crowd milling around the venue doors. Some of them are weighed down with costume bags or props. Richie’s life is much easier than all that, he’s just got a USB stick in his pocket alongside his phone. It’s nine-o-clock on the nose when the door unlocks, which figures. Tech managers are like that, all Type A. Not that he’s got a thing against Type A. The opposite, in fact, considering his vast dating history, Stan being only the most recent. It’s just very very early. Richie’s not sure he can do precise and nitpicky this early.

The length of time until he can have a nap stretches considerably as Morgan tells them she’s not going to be declaring times each company is taking the stage for their rehearsal, instead she’ll be calling them as she sees fit. That they’ll gain energy from viewing each other. Richie eyeballs the crowd. Venue Three has ten shows this year, at least two of them musicals taking the longest possible time allotment. He heads to the seating without being directed. If he’s going to be here until nightfall he needs to find a place where he can go on his phone or nap without being scolded for ruining the spirit of theatre or whatever.

He’s not the only one who’s not impressed. As he triangulates the best place to sit -mid distance from both the tech’s desk, and the stage- a woman in a plum merch shirt crashes in beside him. She’s from the Attic Room, which, if he remembers correctly is on Mike’s schedule but not on Stan’s. Mike tries to see most of the musicals, as well as the physical theatre shows.

“Trying to get away from a trying soprano?” Richie jokes, nodding towards the cluster of plum shirts all sitting together.

She huffs a laugh. “I honestly don’t like any of them? If it wasn’t for my boyfriend I would have quit months ago.”

“Well hey, then, you’re almost done. Only eleven days before Fringe is over.”

“It’s not all bad. I like the acting. And Bill let me design the costumes,” the redhead muses.

“I’ll be sure to tell you everyone’s looking fine, then.” Not that Richie’s actively looking at other people right now. If someone’s hot, it’s fine, but he’s more than happy with Stan and Mike. Can’t imagine needing more than them.

They keep up their chit chat, including actually exchanging names, and a few minutes later a muscled brunet with a goatee comes to sit with them. Bev introduces him as Ben, Attic Room’s stagehand. Richie supposes it’s a good thing that Bev has at least one person in her company that doesn’t suck.

Not that they get much of a chance to connect. After a drama about an Etsy business, Richie gets called up. As he jogs onto the stage, the perfunctory applause lands weakly, uncomfortably. He’s used to either one star or five star reviews online, barking laughter or jeers at comedy bars. Mandatory golf clapping is not a great start, but he shakes it off. He clicks the PowerPoint to its first picture; his mom and dad with wild nineties hair, Mom holding him as a newborn in a swaddling blanket.

“Let’s start this whole thing off by saying my parents had a hard time transitioning me from breast milk to solid food. Dad was quoted as bemoaning ‘he’ll never love anything but the tit’. Because my family is ...my family, for details please see my podcast Trashmouth Talks, shameless plug here, it became a family joke. Any time toddler, elementary schooler, teenager Richie didn’t want to try a new dish at supper, which was often, my parents were adventurous cooks, it was very bad, Dad’d say the line. 

Fast forward fifteen years? He’s half right. I do love the tit, quite a lot. But balls are pretty great too.”

Richie runs through the rest of the monologue successfully. The tech learns quickly where his sound cues are, and the PowerPoint doesn’t fail. He’s a bit short of the runtime claimed in the festival program, since he didn’t need to pause for laughter. He got some, it wasn’t horrible silence the whole time, but the Shakespearean company isn’t exactly his target audience. It’ll be better with people who paid to see him.

It’s nice, when he makes it back to his seat, to find out both Ben and Bev have been laughing for an hour straight. It’ll make the next three days go by much quicker if they think he’s funny. Now he just has to hope their musical doesn’t suck. Even if it does, Richie’s pretty good at lying.

“Boyfriends,” Bev says abruptly.

Richie makes a non-committal hum. He can assume she wants to know more about Stan and Mike, and it’s not like he’s scared of a deep dive. He wouldn’t have put it in the monologue if he was. He just doesn’t know what she specifically wants to know.

“If it wasn’t for my boyfriends I would have quit. Ben, and Bill. Ben knows how to make everything fun,” Bev lays her head on Ben’s waiting shoulder, “and Bill wrote my part with me in mind, I couldn’t turn it down.”

“Here I am, writing my own script like a schmuck,” Richie returns. She’s not trying to make a huge coming out confession, so he’s not going to say he’s proud she said something. It’s wild though, meeting another poly triad. Richie would say what are the chances, except an independent theatre festival is undoubtedly the highest chance he’ll ever have to meet random poly people.

They chat quietly through a painfully amateurish play about chess in the park, and then it’s Bev and Ben’s turn up. It takes much longer to get through Attic Room than Richie’s own act, there are about a million sound and lighting cues. Still, Richie can tell the musical has good bones. The songs are well performed, the dancing is ominous, and the creep factor stays consistently high. It’s hard to make a good horror play, Stan’s said he’s seen two or three total through his entire Fringe history. This makes the cut.

After Attic Room Morgan tells them they have a twenty minute lunch break. Richie would have been snacking the whole time, Morgan’s rules be damned, except he doesn’t actually have food on him. He’s basically the only one, clearly he missed an email. Richie’s left with no choice but to bolt to Wee Johnny’s Pub, Venue Twenty One, and order a sandwich to go. Bev helps herself to a handful of Richie’s sour cream and onion chips when he gets back, a move so bold Richie lets her get away with it. 

The fifth on stage is even more painful to sit through than the third. Richie’s not sure what possessed two waifish five foot tall girls to create the biggest set pieces known to mankind, but they keep missing their sound cues for new scenes because they’re struggling to get everything back into place. About twenty minutes in Ben suffers from critical secondhand embarrassment and gets on the stage to help them.

Or maybe he’s just kind, and easily manipulated. The sixth company seems to think Ben is their assistant too, and he continues to help people move their shit to and from the wings. It’s distinctly not his problem, but he stalwartly continues as the afternoon progresses. Richie can see this becoming his next eleven days. Mike would do the same. Richie wonders if in every triad there’s a nice member to make up for the two assholes. He and Stan are definitely the assholes. Bev is an asshole too, clearly. Bill, her other boyfriend, didn’t have to attend, as only the script writer none of this late stage stuff is his problem. But Richie would put money on him similarly being an asshole. 

Despite having made a friend -and yeah, it sounds so second grade when he says it, but Bev is a genuinely cool person and he wants to hang out with her at recess and eat paste so whatever- Richie practically sprints to his car when Morgan releases them. He’s happy for the connection, but even happier to go home. He’s absolutely a romantic sap underneath, ignoring the crude wrapping paper. He wants his boys, and he knows exactly where they’ll be. Stan and Mike will be waiting in bed for him. They both work tomorrow so they won’t be able to stay up long, but Richie knows they won’t let themselves fall asleep without saying good night. Richie will big spoon one of them until they both fall asleep,and then he’ll retreat to the basement to be up another four hours without disturbing them.

Turns out he’s half right. Mike’s in bed, while Stan’s in the en-suite having a shower. Richie strips down almost entirely and sprawls out on the king sized bed in his tighty whities. In his day to day business Richie’s more of a boxers guy, but when he’s making a visual appearance and can’t afford to go viral looking dumb, he goes with the lesser bunching of underwear.

“Good night, Mikey,” Richie says. He starts to roll over to let the spooning commence, only for Mike to put his hand on Richie’s chest and hold him in place. Then Mike's lips are meeting his. Never let it be said that Richie Tozier doesn’t appreciate a good late night make out session. He’s not sure if it’ll escalate or not, it’s close to eleven and Mike’s gotta be up at six, but he doesn’t really care about that. He just likes Mike’s mouth open against his.

They’re still kissing when the pipes screech with Stan shutting off the water. He pads into the room in just his dressing gown and spends an appreciative moment watching Richie lick into Mike. Richie loves an audience, always has.

“So I take it rehearsal went well?”

“I could get my foot cut off with a chainsaw and still happily kiss Shreddies,” Richie answers before using his mouth for better things, namely returning to the kiss.

“Who has the time for that mess?” Stan asks rhetorically. Then he climbs on the bed onto his side, and peels Richie’s undies down to suck the head of his cock into his mouth.

“I love you, man,” Richie moans, briefly breaking the kiss with his other boyfriend to say the words always in his heart. 

Richie does his best to keep still as Stan blows him. Stan does not like having his face fucked, a fact that Richie is a little disappointed by, though entirely respectful of. Instead Richie buries his hand in Stan’s curly hair the way he likes, and lets him control the sex. Which isn’t to say Richie doesn’t yank on his hair now and again, because ignoring that impulse would be a tragedy for both himself and Stan. He just doesn’t do it in a way that jams Stan’s face onto his cock.

And then, because there is a god, because he did something good in a past life, because he’s got a guardian angel, whatever explains it, Richie’s lucky enough that Stan and Mike switch places. Two partial blowjobs in one night, yup, he is definitely in the best timeline.

Mike requires a different touch. He’s got tighter curls and he wouldn’t like a rough yank anyway. Mike doesn’t have a masochistic bone in his body. Opposites attract, who knew? Instead Richie strokes his freakishly large hand up and down Mike's neck as he makes out with Stan. He wants to touch Mike all over, but he can’t exactly reach all the good bits.

Richie’s not sure who he’ll blow first after he comes, which his boyfriends are seemingly insistent upon. It’s like trying to decide if you want garlic powder and Parmesan cheese or M&Ms on your popcorn. Both very respectable choices, but impossible to have at the same time. He has a trashmouth, not a city dump mouth, he can’t fit two dicks at the same time. Maybe he’ll get Stan and Mike laying side by side, go back and forth in thirty second chunks. It’s a good way to get everything he wants at nearly the same time. Plus it’d have the added bonus of edging both of them, teasing while being totally in the right so Stan can't snap at him to keep pranks out of the bedroom. You spray whipped cream underneath the pillows one time and they never let you forget it.

***

_“There was a moment when I could have stayed closeted. But there’s a virtue my parents taught me to hold near and dear.” Richie pauses to hook them, then delivers the punchline._

_“Laziness.”_

_Sure enough, there’s that beautiful sound of laughter. Trashmouth gets a good one._

_“Oh. Bet you thought I was gonna say pride or some shit. Hell no! The Tozier clan gets by on bare minimum. It’s work, to be closeted. Always thinking up excuses, and acting like you didn’t look in someone’s direction a few seconds too long. Maybe even going hardcore mode and dating someone you’re not into to hide everything. I’m too lazy for that shit.”_

***

Thursday morning Richie gets a text from Bev asking if he wants to flyer with her and Ben, starting around noon. Richie wakes up briefly at ten thirty when Stan and Mike do so they can eat breakfast and line up for their first plays at noon. Seating is first come first served, and both of them care where they sit. Meanwhile Richie’s always been the kind of guy to buy the last ticket available and sit in the nosebleeds, or behind a column. He kisses them both good morning, buries his face in the warm hairy length of Mike’s thigh and tries to tug him back into bed. But not too hard. He knows how much Mike and Stan care about Fringe week. During none of it does he check his phone, or so much as getting out of bed for a piss. He drifts back to sleep before he even hears the garage door slam. He ends up reading Bev’s message at ten after twelve. Richie sends a courtesy apology text. It won’t be the first or last time his own personal clock fucks up other people’s plans. Before Richie can claim he’ll do better tomorrow -probably a lie, but maybe he’ll get Mike to force him up- Bev messages back. They’re currently staked out at Venue Four, whose first play doesn’t start until twelve thirty and currently has a juicy lineup, but don’t bother to meet us here, she’ll text the next location when he says he’s close. 

Richie can appreciate people who don’t take no for an answer. In fact, he sort of has to live life surrounded by people who don’t take no for an answer, because his first instinct will always be to let things ride. It’s easier to make himself do things if other people care about them. He pulls himself out of bed and begins the process of stuffing his backpack with what he’ll need for the day. It’s satan’s asshole outside, no question he’ll sweat through what he’s wearing within twenty minutes of flyering. If he doesn’t wanna be the guy on stage with pit stains, a change of clothes is necessary. Water bottle, cigarette, joint, lighter. Fringe guide, Fringe ticket pass, wallet. Phone loaded with ebooks for if he gets stuck somewhere and it’s easier to wait it out rather than change plans. He finds the stack of postcard sized handbills Stan had designed and printed up for him in the dining room and tucks them in the front pocket. 

He stops twice, once to get an egg McMuffin and a coffee, then again to chase that with a mango lemonade. In line at the food truck he texts Ben and Bev. They’re at Venue Nineteen now. Richie pulls out his guide to consult the map. It’s about three blocks away, the basement of a thrift store. Sucks to be the companies renting that space, it only seats sixty five.

“Get me one?” Bev asks, gesturing to the drink as he comes up to them. 

“I don’t know your favourite flavour,” Richie jokes. “Is it tigerblood? Have you ever seen _anyone_ drink the tigerblood flavour? I’m convinced it’s a code word, if you walk up and ask for it the cashier gives you a manila envelope for the codes to an Argentinian nuke.”

“Lime, thanks.”

“Don’t you already have two men who can go run and get you one?”

Bev snorts. “Bill would never come down here. He’d throw himself off a cliff before he’d watch an audience react to something he did.”

“I’d get her a thousand lemonades,” Ben confirms. Bev smiles at him. It’s sickeningly sweet. Richie loves it.

Flyering is not an action for the faint of heart. Stepping up to a stranger in line and saying ‘here’s why you should watch me next’ takes a certain sense of arrogance. Of knowing your talent is worth watching. According to actors who do the whole Fringe circuit some cities are better than others. Edinburgh is a sea of the disinterested, too much volume for too little customers. It’s a death sentence flyering in Montreal, nearly every viewer hating being talked at. Winnipeg patrons on the other hand actively call performers with handbills to them while stuck in line, asking for a synopsis. Here it’s a healthy medium. Some people refuse to make eye contact, body language screaming ‘please leave me alone’ while stuffing a handbill into their purse. Others seem easily sold, saying with who knows how much honesty that they’ll check him out. 

It’s the best feeling when he goes to sell himself and the person says he was already on their list. This is Richie’s third time performing at this festival. He’s not a huge name, no Martin Dockery or Mike Delamont, able to sell out runs just by coming to town, but he’s big enough that if he drops the other two titles veteran goers might recognize them. Or maybe it’s not that he’s big, just that veteran Fringers are obsessive. Stan and Mike have been attending since high school, buying more and more tickets each year, they have previous productions memorized in a way Richie never could. When they’re making their initial lists of Want To See, some companies get an automatic pass without even reading the play summary. Somehow this applies to him too. Scattered in the various lines they hit up are people who _liked_ last year’s Trashmouth Sits At The Table and _plan_ to see him. Fuckin’ awesome.

Once Richie does his spiel, again and again, Bev beside him gives her selling points. Their plays have very little in common, besides both being in Venue Three, but Richie can't imagine walking around with anyone else. Unless of course Stan or Mike meet up with him, but that seems unlikely. They both have schedules to maximize the number of plays seen, spending half a day flyering with Richie is three or four plays they don’t see. He misses them, he always does, any event is better with Mike and Stan with him, but he’s having fun with Ben and Bev.

Around four thirty Bev and Ben split off. Their premiere is at five, and every minute of prep matters in a many spinning plates musical. Richie’s premiere is at seven fifteen, and he doesn’t need any prep at all, except making sure the PowerPoint remote has batteries. If Richie was a better person he’d walk up to the used book store and pick up a novel or two to kill time with. Instead he goes to the free outdoor stage and as sort of a challenge makes himself watch the performers get no attention. Call it a reminder that no matter how stressful things seem, it could always be worse. Yeah, he kinda wants to throw up because he’s going on stage in a few hours, but he knows he has enough local fanbase that the audience won’t be empty. The performer on stage right now has not a single person clapping in the rhythm they’re trying to provoke.

Richie does end up puking about five minutes before going on stage, but he sucks down the watery dregs of his drink and shakes it off. It goes well. It’s not the best show of his life, no one is hysterical, but everything technological works, he doesn't spontaneously lose his voice, and his run time is properly longer when he doesn’t want to start his next anecdote over the sound of laughter. He really couldn’t ask for more.

He’s surprised to see Bev and Ben waiting around after. “What the hell? Did you buy a ticket? You’ve already seen me do this.”

“Except for the improv bit,” Ben cheerfully points out.

Bev shrugs. “It’s only twelve bucks. We wanted to support you.”

Now Richie feels like kind of a jerkoff. He definitely did not rewatch Attic Room to give them more sales.

He pulls his phone out of his jeans pocket and opens the My Cereals group chat. **Text me when you get this and I’ll see an evening play with one of you**. Of course Stan has sent both his and Mike’s schedule PDFs to his phone, but you never know when something’s gotten a bad review or bad word of mouth or someone’s gotten a comp ticket and the day’s lineup has changed.

“You wanna go get some grub? Maybe see something with my guys, once whatever they’re in now lets out?”

“I’m gonna go see the Wonderheads at nine thirty,” Bev says. “I’d invite the three of you, except you don’t really seem like the silent physical theatre with elaborate maskwork type. Do you have plans for the eleven to midnight slot?”

“I don’t plan what I see, I’m sure both of them do though. I’ll text you where we are when I find out? And no, that’s really more Mike’s style. I’m sure they’re on his schedule some time this week. Benjamin?”

Ben shakes his head. “Can’t. I’m volunteer stagehanding for like the next two plays tonight. I’ve only got fifteen minutes before I gotta go back in, actually. I guess that’s enough time to go pick up a wrap from the East Indian truck?”

Richie was thinking more along the lines of a slice of pizza or a cardboard bowl of fries, but it figures. Ben’s like stupid hot, of course his junky cheat food is still just a chickpea wrap. He probably goes to the gym too.

Richie jogs for no man, but he does concede to a fast walk over to the food truck parking lot to get Ben his dinner before he has to go back to his slave labour. Because that’s the thing, Richie knows they’re not going to pay him, Ben’s just doing it out of the innocence of his heart, he doesn’t even need to ask.

Except he can’t quite shut up. He’s annoyed on Ben’s behalf, and when Richie feels annoyed -when he feels just about any emotion- he has to talk it out. “Is he going to just do that for free? Boy needs to gets paid!”

“Ben doesn’t really care about money. He’s got a big six figure job that lets me and Bill fuck around being artsy.” 

“Ooooh, a sugar daddy. Noice.”

Bev shoves Richie, a lot of strength hidden in her slight frame. “Fuck off.” 

“No, I’m not judging. Stan and Mike both have real people jobs too. I have a podcast.”

“Ben likes being an architect. He’s good at it. He’s won awards. But it’s serious shit. Building Bill’s sets and helping move them was like a vacation for him, all May and June. It really doesn’t surprise me that he wants to do it more, for someone else.”

“Yeah, but he could still get paid. Some people are too fuckin’ good for this world,” Richie swears.

They talk as they walk through the most delicious parking lot in the world. Bev wants to sit relatively close to the stage for Wonderheads, so she needs to line up about a half hour in advance to score something she likes, which means they’ve got about twenty five minutes to talk. Richie’s already made her promise to flyer with him again tomorrow. It wasn’t a hard sell. Until the reviews get posted, word of mouth is the best advertising any artist has. Still, he could be doing it alone. He doesn’t want to. He wants to spend hours with her.

It’s Richie who leans in to kiss Bev. Maybe it’s a little fucked, wanting her. Wanting more than what he already has. But happy and satisfied and complete don’t have to mean the same things, in the version of queer that Richie’s found himself labelling as. 

He doesn’t say anything before he leans in. Not _I want to kiss you_ , or the firmer _I’m going to kiss you now_ , or the explanation _I think I like you_. He doesn’t even make a dumb joke. But they’re actors, they know how to telegraph, how to pick up signals. Before their lips touch, Beverly has a hundred years to figure out how she’s going to respond. And how she does is to open her lemon-lime mouth and curl her fingers on his five-o-clock shadow.

It’s nice. Richie is used to Stan’s ever present sharp edges, the minute tremble in everything he does. He’s used to Mike’s stocky body keeping him safe. Bev is bubbles, and sun warmed skin. It’s not better, or worse. Just an entirely new sensation, and Richie’s always been too ADHD spectrum to not chase newness.

They break the seal of their mouths, but don’t move away from each other. At least not until Bev lifts up her lemonade and sticks it between their faces to inhale it. The sweating but still cold cup is pressing against Richie’s nose, they’re so close. Bev sucks hard on the straw, making an obnoxious noise that makes Richie burst into laughter. It’s such a hilarious mood killer he wants to make an Instagram story about it.

“That was nice. Or noice, to speak your language. If we wanna do any more I gotta talk to my boys,” Bev says when she finishes hoovering up the sugary sour juice.

“Same.” Richie knows what they’ll say, he wasn’t their first poly boyfriend, but they’ve taught him communication is vital.

“So until then, blatant conversation change... Mr Tozier, have you ever gotten a henna tattoo?”

Somehow Richie has the feeling he’s going to end up at the henna tent on the barricaded pop up market street before the week is up. Oh well. It could be worse. They could be drunk and talking real ink and needle tattoos. 

***

_“So did your parents care, when you came out to them, you ask. Nay, beg. This is listed as a comedy show, don’t turn into a sad after school special about how we should support our queer family members, you plead. Don’t worry folks. They cared. Just not for the reasons you think.”_

_“See, when I was a teenager I got a job at a Pizza Hut. It was in a strip mall, along with a lotto store, a few clothing stores, and a Dairy Queen. The Pizza Hut was open far later than any other store in the mall, and so it was our job to put up the grating when we were closing. Sure there was a security guard, but no one ever saw him, too busy fighting ghosts or something. My boyfriend of the month worked there too, on the same shift. We couldn’t fool around at the store, everyone knew there were cameras to prevent altering the food or stealing money. But we could decline putting up the bars as requested, and fool around in the middle of a dark mall. Privacy for days, and more leg room than Brad’s shitty car. A perfect solution.”_

_Richie grins, and watches the anticipation grow in the audience. They know something’s coming._

_“At least until the night he’s got me bent over the coin operated helicopter ride and all of a sudden there’s real ass police sirens because Mr Kessner’s mistaken our pimply asses for intruders. I came out to my parents in a police station over getting railed on a kiddie ride. I think it’s fair that they cared a little bit.”_

***

He’s got the second time slot on Saturday, two to three. It’s not the best slot to lure in like-minded dirty minded wretches, he always does better with the _I’ve already hit the beer tent_ crowd, but at least it’s not a noon slot. Richie makes around half capacity, and has to consider it good enough. Besides, it’s hard to maintain a bad mood. He’s meeting up with Stan for Bedsheets Improv, an R rated improv troupe at one of the few licensed adult-only venues. Richie loves the group, he could easily see them multiple times any given festival.

Stan being Stan, he’s already in line when Richie gets over to Venue Seventeen. He’s third from front, and Richie thinks Stan can be forgiven when the first two ticket holders are wearing Bedsheets Improv merch and have obviously been in line since the play previous closed doors.

“Make any line friends?” Richie asks Stan, settling beside him on the sun baked concrete. The gravel biting his shins is the reason Stan wears tight jeans the whole ninety five degree festival. But Richie likes his look, doesn’t plan on losing the jorts and Hawaiian shirt over graphic tee combo any time soon. He’ll just have to brush off the embedded stones when they eventually stand up.

Line friends are the theatre nerd equivalent of camp friends. Friendship built on very narrow parameters of common interest with a definitive ending. Between Stan and Mike they must have a double dozen people they only talk to during Fringe week. Mostly to share play recommendations with, the occasion dip into real life information like what career they have the other fifty one weeks of the year, or family, or hobbies. Some of them they don’t even know the names of, just Man With Hair Like a Lion’s Mane, and Woman Who Always Wears Ankle Length Tie Dyed Skirts. Mike jokes it’s not really Fringe until he spots Man With Thirty Years Worth Of Fringe Merch striding through the overloaded sidewalks.

“Yeah, actually. I met Eddie?”

Richie takes a few glugs of his water. Talking for an hour is thirsty work. “Should I know that? You’re looking at me like I should know what that means.”

Stan’s face does not get any less confused by Richie’s ignorance as he begins to explain. “Eddie Kaspbrak writes the Kasbrak Revue? It’s a printed zine of reviews. There are milk crate boxes of them at half a dozen venues. There’s no way you haven’t seen them around. I’ve read his opinions for years, but I never thought I’d meet him.”

“You sound like you want to hold his hand,” Richie teases.

It’s like a snap of fingers, how quick Stan’s face goes from lecturing to worried. 

“What, dude. You look like I just said I like to turn cats into hamburger meat.”

“What if I do? Would it freak you out? It’d be the first time since the three of us started dating.”

“I made out with Bev, it’d be pretty hypocritical of me to not want you to find your bliss.”

Stan shrugs. “You’d be surprised how often open turns into an ‘its only okay when I do it’ deal.”

“I’m not any of your shitty exes, Stan. Or have you not seen my brilliant, destined to have a sold out run one man show? In it I have not one but several bits about being in a kickass polycule. I’m a way more appreciative and totally better all around boyfriend than any of them.”

Stan takes Richie’s overexaggerated bragging the way it’s meant to be taken, as reassurance. “So you don’t mind if I text him?”

“Go see something cool with him, and go get head in the bathroom at Venue Seven after.” Of the five indoor bathrooms available at Fringe, it’s easily the cleanest and most spacious.

“It’s not that. Or not just that, I mean I definitely do want to hook up with him. But I also really liked our conversation. He’s very sharp, witty.”

If _Stan_ thinks someone is sharp, they must be a razor blade of a human being. 

“I actually have today’s revue on me, if you’d like to get a sense of him?” Stan offers. 

It’s more than Richie’s been able to successfully offer of Bev. He’s tried, but their schedules keep not lining up. It’s not avoidance, Richie’s schedule barely lines up with his boys, and they live in the same home. They’ve still got eight days before the festival’s over, though. Richie’s not giving up meshing the groups yet. He’s sure Stan would appreciate Bev’s bluntness.

“Sure, hand it over.”

Richie takes the paper he’s offered. It’s very old school zine, extra long paper folded in half and stapled with a sketchy drawing on the front page and actor interviews in skinny columns. Richie starts skim reading, hoping to find a review of something he’s seen, so he can see how well their opinions match up. What he comes across first is a review of his.

Trashmouth Falls In Love  
3.5 stars.  
It won’t be the funniest monologue you see this year, (for those please see my upcoming Top Five in 2020 column) but Richie ‘Trashmouth’ Tozier has a lot to say about his history of relationships, and most of it hits. There’s a bit about a houseboat that had me in tears amongst other solid anecdotes. Tozier knows how to get the most out of his topic, albeit as crudely spoken as his Fringe guide summary implies.  
Downsides: he references his podcast at least a half dozen times. At what point does self promotion turn grotesque? You could tell he’s used to an online platform even if he didn’t mention it every five minutes. It’s vastly evident in how he doesn’t make use of the stage, speaking fluently with body language but never letting himself explore the area.  
Should I see it: Do you find South Park funny? Seth Rogan? Do you like your queer representation more Tiger King and Ru Paul than Anderson Cooper and Harvey Milk? If yes to any of the above, give it a shot. A cum shot, badum-ching, as I’m sure the playwright himself would add to that poorly phrased sentence. 

Richie scowls at the article, not only because he did in fact automatically make a cum joke at the second to last sentence.

“Standon, you’re crushing on someone who gave me a bad review. Scandalous.”

“Three and a half isn’t bad. He just thinks there could be an improvement or two.”

Richie makes a farting noise with screwed up lips.

“Rich, I’m never gonna tell you what to say in your podcast, or on stage. Comedy is your life. I love that you love what you do. But not everyone’s gonna give you a gold star every time.”

“Chill, Stanislaw. Three and a half isn’t a drunken heckle, I’ve made it through worse. I was joking.”

“Just another failed attempt at comedy,” Stan smirks, and twists to the side to kiss him. The pair in front of them aren’t looking at them, both scrolling on their phones, but Richie wouldn’t give a fuck if they were. He already talked about his sexual history for an hour today, a kiss with his boyfriend is hardly his most exhibitionist move.

Richie lets his mouth be ravished thoroughly for a few minutes, then pulls back to finish encouraging his boyfriend. “Seriously, if you two like each other, he can hate me. It’s fine.”

Stan denies it, eyes the slightest bit glassy with emotion. “He won’t hate you. Anyone who hates you is stupid. I love you. Thank you. Kiss me again.”

Richie’s not about to say no. It’ll be twenty minutes before the doors open and they can file up the three flights of stairs to the makeshift theatre. Richie will happily bruise his lips from overuse until then.

***

_“There are four kinds of people to date in this world. People who drink. Fun, if you’re going for your traditional loud and lusty and fighty experiences. People who smoke weed. Again to pull on a cliche, great for dumb conversations and strengthening your five senses. People who do stronger drugs, who can be selectively interesting as long as common sense is used. And then there’s sober people. Never trust a shady ass straight edge prick.”_

_“I almost got arrested for trespassing, searching for a place to smoke out of the wind with Katrina,” Richie puts up a tweeted picture of a spent roach on the sidewalk. “I puked in the same stall as Delia in a club.” A picture of the graffiti from that club that he thought was hilarious at the time. “I did a rail off James’ pecs and let him do one off my ass cheek.” A picture of them outside a club, with censor bars over their eyes. “I went through a pack of gum with Dopinder as we rolled.” A picture of the nest of blankets and stuffies they cocooned in. “Then there’s Jeremy, telling me my body is a temple.” This last picture is just a massive Times New Roman question mark._

_Richie looks down at his body dubiously. The crack of laughter in the audience would be hurtful, if it wasn’t exactly what he was going for._

_“What kind of creepy ass shit is that? What are you gonna say next, that I should start meditating and eating quinoa? I dumped him.”_

***

“I kissed someone today,” Mike says. 

Richie weaves their hands together to show he’s listening, though he’s too tired to roll over and open his eyes. Stan’s already asleep on the left side of the bed. Normally Richie would be thinking about what to knock off the To Do list once Mike falls asleep, but he’s wiped from being out in the sun all day. He might be asleep before Mike, at the rate he’s going.

“I watched the musical at your venue. The dystopian attic one, not the car salesman one. It was good, even if the ending was a little bleak. But the set was astounding. A work of art, man. I really wanted to break the rules and take a pic or two. I stuck around after, wanted to ask one of the performers where I should direct my applause, and I ended up talking to him for an hour and missing my next scheduled play.”

“No shit.” Ben would have to be a good lover, to get Bev’s attention, or at least Richie assumed, but to have it confirmed by Mike is definitive. Mike is the most patient and attentive lover Richie’s ever had. He’s also the best judge of character of anyone Richie knows. If he thinks Ben is worth loving, then Richie can trust his own evaluation of the situation. 

“The company’s going to Boulder Fringe, but that’s not until August. I think I want to see him all summer.”

Mike sounds so hopeful, how could Richie be anything but happy for him? He just needs to make sure Mike knows the level of complication he’s agreeing to. “Good for you, Mikey. A kissing friend’s the best kind of line friend. Bennyboy told you he has a girlfriend, right?”

“You know him? And yeah, and a boyfriend, Bill. And he knows about you two too, of course.”

“I’m hanging out with her a lot. Bev? She gets me. I think I’m going to do a segment with her on my podcast.” Richie wants to see her more now than ever. If Ben’s kissing Mike, that means Ben and Bev and Bill have talked about it, and are open. If they get a good moment alone, Richie might get his second scent of her summertime goodness.

“It’s a small world,” Mike replies, a little in awe with the universe.

“But there’s still so much to travel.” Richie strokes a hand over Mike’s hip -fuck he loves Mike’s legs, he always has- and snuggles in a little closer. “Kiss me until I pass out.”

***

_Richie clicks his Power Point to the tweet that changed his life. He reads it out loud to the audience. “My neighbours been playing Last Christmas on repeat for seven hours. I did the math, that’s ninety six times. Not even a fast techno version, the slow Wham one. I can’t tell if they’re trolling me or if they’re broken inside. What do I do?”_

_Some of the answers crack Richie up to this day. He flashes the best of them onto the screen, as he narrates for the visually impaired slash those who didn’t come to a comedy show to read. @Tinnitusxear says blast the other queer Christmas anthem, All I Want For Christmas Is You, back at them. @b4dLuuck says find the other side of the breakup and kill them for doing this to you. @ReynoldsWitcherson says go sing a real christmas carol at them. @PeptoBison says Eighties Night porch party. They bring the music, you bring the crop top. @STWI567 says it’s a ghost, go kick down the door and blast them with rock salt._

_“I love so many of my warped, fucked up fans. But out of all the very helpful and not at all invasive suggestions which one did I follow?” Richie flips to the slide of @TheShrunkinHead saying time for a bong rip and bonding with your neighbour. “That’s right. I said, I know what this melting down person needs. I know what this person who’s absolutely losing their mind on Christmas Eve eve needs. A stranger, offering drugs.”_

***

Every Fringe performer gets eight shows over the eleven festival days, unless they’ve made a different agreement with a rented out venue. As a Venue Three performer, lucky enough to win a free spot in the December lottery, Richie gets a neat eight. He didn’t premiere on Wednesday, opening night, he’s got today off, and he doesn’t have stage time next Friday. With Tozier Talks getting uploaded every Tuesday, he either has to record today, or skip a week. It’s a moderately tempting option for his lazy soul, but no. He’s not being an arrogant dick saying he has fans waiting, it’s just facts. Fifteen thousand people follow his Twitter, and he’s got enough subscribers to have ad revenue.

Last year his Fringe week episode featured half a dozen other performers Richie’d met as line friends, or in the artist’s lounge in the cordoned off lobby of Venue One. This year Richie hasn’t been networking half as much, content with meeting up with Mike or Stan or Bev and occasionally Ben. When no one from his favourite sketch group Running With Sledgehammers is available today -he really shouldn’t have left this until the last minute, but Fringe is a complete time suck- he’s only got one other performer to call on. 

Luckily Bev is sympathetic to his needs. Attic Room has a show at five thirty, but there’s no way the segment Richie’s going to record with her will be more than a half hour. He’s almost got half baked intentions to blow off recording and just play Mario Kart until they have to take off. They, because she’s let him know Bill is tagging along. Whatever. Fine with Richie, it won’t be the first or last time someone’s crashed a party of his. Some of the best memories come from nights of meeting new people at places you’re not supposed to be. 

**We’re here** says the text message.

Richie types back as he lets his thought draw to a conclusion. **the doors unlocked come in. Follow the dulcet tones of my voice**

Contrary to the text, there’s no reason to start a new sentence he knows will be interrupted. Maybe he just wants them to wander, see how sweet his living situation is. It might not compare to the house Ben moneybags Hanscom apparently deadass built for them, but it’s still a colourful joyous place that holds all his stuff. He’s way prouder of living here than he was when he lived next door, alone. 

Lack of noise aside, they find his office anyway. Bill and Bev walk in together, both of them wearing tacky sunglasses from Claire’s. Richie’s jealous. He wants cool sunglasses, but he’s blind as a fuckin’ bat so he needs a prescription pair. Bill is holding a massive mango lemonade from Lemon Heaven, so evidently Richie’s circle of acquaintances has another obsessive. Bev leans over for a sip no less than three times before Bill’s stretched out on Richie’s couch and they’re settled in front of the pop filters. Richie knows Attic Room came from Bill’s mind, and is maybe not the best mind to tap for a comedy podcast. Bill doesn’t seem to mind the snubbing, just pulls out his phone and promises to be quiet.

Richie rattles off five or six introductions of his guest, including and dropping social media tags, talking about her theatre role and not, each with its own joke or two. He’ll edit for what feels best later. Or if none of them still hit right in twenty four hours, he’ll record something new. Being able to copy&paste comedy is the best.

“I call this the Click Rou-La-La Challenge. I’ve texted you a link to a random word generator site. You’re going to click five times, and take a screencap that I’ll post on my Twitter for proof. Use three words to tell me the raunchiest story you can. True story or total bullshit, about you or your friends or a story passed on from a guy you met at a party once, whatever. I don’t care about that. I want grandmas rolling over in their graves. I want grandsons blushing as they find out their grandpas have chlamydia from unsafe sex. I want-”

Bev interrupts Richie’s narrative of spice level to start crafting her bit. Richie can see the five words listed on her screen. He’s excited about the word explosion. There’s that meme, cool people don’t look at explosions. If he was building this he’d reference that somehow. Or a TNT or c4 kink or something? “Lets make it a fantasy, a maybe, a might be, a possibility. Me and my boyfriends. That’s right, listeners, baby poly Trashmouth’s made friends with his first polycule.”

Richie would interrupt, to point out he’s been with Stan and Mike for eighteen months now, he’s hardly a newbie anymore, but he doesn’t want to interrupt her flow. Some improv artists can take that, some can’t.

“So we’re outside, leisurely hiking through the woods surrounding the cabin Ben’s built us. It’s just the beginning of fall, when you can justify sexy layers and leggings and toques but it’s warm enough to be completely comfortable. We’re looking at the birds, at the squirrels, at each other’s asses as we switch spots randomly while aimlessly walking. We’re here, taking time off work and projects because it’s someone’s birthday. Ben’s birthday? Everyone knows it’s a sexcation. I know, Bill knows, Ben knows. Our friends know. Our social media followers know. It’s not an if, it’s a when, and three hot asses strolling through the woods in tight jeans and tighter leggings is a good incentive.”

Richie can picture it. He loves Mike’s legs, but Ben’s are probably as well muscled as his upper half, and Bill has kind of a bubble butt, he couldn’t help but notice. And he’s seen Bev in a skirt, it’s one of about five costume changes in Attic Room, he knows what she has to offer. 

“Bill’s got a bag, and Ben and I haven’t bothered to ask, it’s obviously a picnic blanket and snacks. Part of me’s already planning on brushing the food to the side and climbing into their laps once we’ve found a place to lay the blanket out. I want them, and every atom of the universe knows it, even if we’re just having a pg conversation about building birdfeeders for the yard back home on the surface. But then Bill stops and asks ‘wanna see your birthday present?’ Of course Ben does, who doesn’t secret love presents, even if they pretend to be cynical and say they’re too old for birthdays?”

Richie is the kind of guy who tells waiters it’s his birthday so they’ll sing to him and give him free brownies. He’ll be fifty and not too old for birthday celebrations. 

“Bill opens his bag and pulls out rope. Nice, silky, bright cerulean blue rope. Hanks and hanks of it, enough to fill a bag that should be full of sandwiches and watermelon and cans of soda. Ben’s jaw drops twice that day. Once seeing it, and once when his mouth is stretched around a rope ball gag, because of course Bill’s the kind of man who remembers his Boy Scouts knotwork.”

Richie takes a moment to glance over at Bill, who, it’s true, does look like the suburban childhood nostalgia type. It’d be taking it a step too far to post a pic of him, so the listeners will just have to take Bev’s word for it.

“Not that I’m ungrateful. Knots are important. Ben looks fantastic, nude in the middle of the woods, dappled with sunlight all over his long body. I get to see the full extent of him, his wrists are tied to each other over his head, rope straddling a branch, legs spread wide to brace himself. And he needs to, immediately. Bill’s on his knees, jeans pushed halfway down his thighs so he can jerk himself off as he blows Ben. I’m behind him, sucking his earlobe and grabbing his ass, getting into him like he deserves. Between the two of us, when he comes it’s an explosion.”

The pause while Richie waits for more dirty details goes on far too long before he realises Bev’s used present, branch, and explosion. He’ll have to cut the silence in Audacity. It’s hard to be entirely coherent though. Richie’s fucking blindsided. He did not expect to be actually turned on. Usually when he does this bit he just ends up laughing at whatever weird kinks his guest comes up with, and if he’s creating his own fantasy it’s even harder to take it seriously. Call it whatever drove him to make your mom jokes from such an early age, but Richie doesn’t get offended, he gets snickery. This though; Bev’s a good storyteller, never mind that Attic Room is all Bill’s work. He can really picture all three parties doing what she’s said. He can picture himself there, kneeling behind Bill and fucking him, or making Bev use Ben as a brace as he fucks her standing. 

“Damn, Beverly. If we weren’t in an audience of thousands right now, I’d take my pants off,” Richie jokes to relieve the tension. 

Bev dials it right back up saying, “do it anyway.”

“Uh, what?”

“Your pants, Richie. Take them off. I’ve heard your monologue half a dozen times now. Show me the monster dick, or edit for accuracy, Tozier.” 

“You serious?” He wants her to be. It’s been a while since he’s been with a woman, and he can’t think of a cooler woman than Bev Marsh. 

Case in point, she doesn’t try to talk this out, just sits up straighter in the professional gamer computer chair and peels off her ever present Attic Room cast shirt. 

“I don’t brag about the size of my tits for twelve dollars a seat, but I’m not afraid to do a big reveal.” Bev reaches behind herself to unhook clasps. Before Richie can fully enjoy the sight of bra straps sliding down shoulders, the lingerie is gone entirely. 

Richie takes another look over at his couch. Bill still has his phone in one hand. His other is curved around the cockbulge in his jeans. 

“You gonna come over and join us?”

Bill smiles at him. Not a cocky smirk, but an actual smile. “I’m good. You two have fun.”

Richie spends the next twenty minutes making Bev come on the strength of his titplay alone, really giving his mouth and tongue and fingertips a workout. Richie’s rock hard but barely cares about reciprocation, too genuinely happy with the crinkled areola against his tongue to give a shit what his dick is doing. Not to mention the ego boost of glancing over to Bill to find him with his hand down his jeans. Richie would spend some time preening, except Bev’s so passionate Richie feels a little frenzied. In the end though, she does free his erection from his shorts and jerks him to completion. It’s only once Richie’s passing out the tissues like a good host that he realizes they never stopped recording. He’ll have to cut a huge portion from this podcast once he’s editing it.

***

_“The following events are so ludicrous I drew you some diagrams.”_

_Richie’s first shitty drawing is a rectangle meant to be a front door, wavy circle in the middle a wreath. He’s drawn a stick figure with glasses beside a stick figure with loop-d'loops for curly hair._

_“Figure One, the neighbour actually opens the door. Excuse me, what? It’s 2020, it was 2018. Who opens the door when it’s knocked on anymore? If it was your Uber Eats you’d have gotten an alert, a friend would have texted first. Everyone else is a serial killer, hands down. A serial killer, or someone with a petition, or a religious cult trying to recruit. Different flavours of ‘I’m staying on my couch away from the madness’, but flavours of it all the same.”_

_Richie’s second drawing is stick figure them, with a completely wonky anthropomorphic smiling marajuana leaf floating above their heads. Both of the stick figures are smiling._

_“Figure Two, this blotchy, tear soaked cutie actually wants to do drugs with me. At the sight of a dimebag he’s letting me into his house. Someone alert the vampire nation, the quickest way to get invited into someone’s house is that dank kush.”_

_The third pencilled out drawing is a six striped flag with R O Y G B V written in the lines._

_“Figure Three, @Tinnitusxear was right. Stan is gay, his boyfriend has just left him. I’m low key pissed off at my life choices. I could have had a gay best friend for ages now, if I was the kind of gay who accomplished things. Who did things like introducing themselves to the neighbours, and hold down a job with normal hours. Instead I’m a chaotic internet trawler gay, and it’s taken a Twitter poll to get me into Stanley’s house. It’s been three minutes, the smoke hasn’t even kicked in yet, and I’m imagining retiring in rockers together.”_

_The next drawing is stick-Stan and stick-Richie in front of a mangled attempt at a couch, with a bird and a square in a square on top of their heads._

_“Figure Four, Stan’s actually super cool? Wild. Who ever really likes their neighbours? They’re all assholes who play the wrong genre of music too loudly, am I right? We’re past bitching about Thomas now, we’re talking hobbies. He’s into nature and animals and hiking, I’m telling him about all the tv I like and how it’s impacted my sense of humour. Really top notch weed bonding, except it feels realer than that. I don’t just want the hypothetical ideal of a gay best friend, anymore. I want Stan specifically to Tim Allen me and look at me to converse with over a comically tall fence.”_

_“Lastly, Figure Five. The art speaks for itself, doesn’t it?,” Richie says, gesturing to the drawing of two stick figures standing on a bed. “Clearly Stan and I played five little monkeys and jumped on the bed. Oh. Oh wait, tech glitch, there’s a display problem.” Richie clicks to the next picture, still labelled Figure Five but this time featuring a bed with horizontal stick figures. “Stan and I **banged**. In three different rooms.”_

***

Richie’s enjoying a Guinness stout in the beer tent when he spots a profile he thinks he recognizes. Stan’s showed him pics they've taken together. In front of the iconic poster covered wall at Venue One. At a restaurant. Poolside, somewhere. That’s definitely Eddie, drinking some pale artesian microbrew. 

Richie can’t help himself. He’s half defensive and half a shit stirrer, he wants to bring up the review and see what Eddie will say to his face. Stan’s vibing with Eddie’s existence right now, Richie wants to see why. He chugs the last of his beer, goes to the counter and buys another, and some light lager shit that Eddie’ll like. Then he transports them both to Eddie’s table, where he invites himself to sit.

“You know I’m not just in front of my camera. I do sets at comedy clubs sometimes,” Richie points out to him. 

“Oh yeah? Are you as stiff there as you were the night I saw you?” Eddie retorts, not pretending for a second that he doesn’t know what Richie’s talking about. 

“I’m not going to write blocking for a comedy show. That’s too much to try to focus on at once. I have ADHD, I can’t do that.” 

Eddie shrugs. “I write it like I see it. Or not see it, you know, like you not utilizing the stage.”

“Fuck off, Eds,” Richie laughs.

“Don’t call me Eds!”

“That wasn’t even the most painful part of the review. Tell me the funniest thing you’ve ever seen at Fringe, to let me know what standard of humour I’m not living up to.”

“Can’t handle anything less than glowing, huh. You’re a huge baby.”

“Is that a pejorative, or a kink, or...”

“I genuinely can’t believe you know the word pejorative.”

“Why, is it only for the non-Seth Rogan gays to use? Do you often stretch your vocabulary to feel superior, Eddie Spaghetti?”

“Oh, fuck you.”

Somehow, despite the aura of hostility Richie is genuinely enjoying himself. It’s like when he gets the good kind of hecklers, the kind he can banter with before shutting down. Richie takes a sip of his beer and waits for Eddie to set up the next volley.

“A few years ago I was watching One Man Back to the Future.”

“Aren’t there a few of those this year?” Richie distinctly remembers Stan raving about the voice mastery of One Man Hunger Games. 

“The Shelby Bond One Man series, not Winston McAnders. He had a bit of audience participation, for effects. For the flaming tire tracks he had two rolls of crepe paper. When the two volunteers threw them they went in opposite directions. They crisscrossed. Shelby’s face... I nearly pissed myself laughing.”

Richie nods. “Glad you place prop malfunction over my darling brand of humor.” 

“Hey, one’s interesting,” Eddie bites back.

Richie wishes he had pretzels, but not enough to cross the lot to where the food trucks are idling. Especially not when he has company of this calibre. He wants to know more about the man, Stan’s not the type to swoon and obsessively relate a thousand details of his lover. He and Ben might be able to gossip about Bev, should he ever hang out with him without her, but Richie and Stan don’t have that relationship. If Richie wants facts, he’ll need to gather them himself.

“So what made you start the whole review thing?”

“Uh.” 

“What, you seriously don’t want to tell me?”

Voice suddenly flat instead of fascinatingly sharp, Eddie tells him, “you seem like the kind of guy who makes fun of everything.”

“You know for a fact I have two boyfriends, you’re hooking up with one of them. You really think with all those interpersonal relationships I don’t know how to take something seriously?”

“I think Stan and Mike are probably very good at yelling at you to smarten up.”

The normal thing to do would be back down, demure, tell Eddie he doesn’t have to tell him. Richie doesn’t want to. There’s something charismatic about Eddie, in a diamond edged drill bit kind of way. He wants to prod him until he explodes, see what pretty shrapnel he can make.

“I guarantee you whatever weird ass reason you have, I’ve seen or done weirder. I had a very interesting decade in my twenties. You want me to take wild stabs in the dark, prove I’m impervious to bizarre?”

“It’s not weird. Or, I guess it is kind of? But not like giggling weird. Unless you’re a real asshole, but I think Stan’s too good to date someone that sleazy.”

“Thanks?” It half sounds like a compliment.

“My mom had -has, I guess, but we’re estranged, I don't really think of her in present tense- she has Munchausens. It took me a lot of time to figure it out. Into college. Watching theatre was what got me out of the house. It was how I figured out my fiancé hated all the things I loved, and I couldn’t stand her encouraging me to be scared anymore, just like my mom. So I kind of just ghosted it all, and moved to a city with a Fringe festival. I owe theatre for the life I have now. It was pretty bleak for a while.”

“That sucks.”

“That sucks?”

Richie tries for better. “That blows?”

“That. Blows.”

Richie throws his hands up into the air. “You’ve clearly watched Trashmouth Falls In Love-”

“And your other two,” Eddie mutters.

“So you know I don’t have family trauma. Drama, sure, but not trauma. I don’t have, like, a fuckin’ comparable anecdote to share. And you want serious, so I can’t comment to take the edge off. So I’m just sorry she was such a heinous bitch. It both sucks and blows.”

Eddie nods. “Points for the gargantuan amount of effort made.”

That’s entirely enough sincerity for now. “There’s only one gargantuan thing here and it’s my dick.”

“Wow,” Eddie says deadpan. “Tozier makes a dick joke. Shocking. Call the presses.”

“You are the presses.”

“I have a once a year zine.”

“So review other stuff the rest of the year. No reason to bottle up the creativity. It doesn’t have to be about coping mechanisms, it can just be chill. Cereal, maybe. Or everything cucumber flavoured and scented.”

“You making another dick joke?”

“Do you want me to be?” It’s flirting, suddenly. Or maybe it always was. He can see what Stan sees in Eddie as much as he can see what Mike sees in Ben. This time he’s letting himself want it.

One thing that can be said for Eddie, he doesn’t back down. “If half your stories are true, and I’ve developed a good instinct over the years about who’s embellishing real stories and who’s lying, you’re a decent lover. I just don’t know how this works. I tried to do research but there’s nothing cohesive, universal. Are you and Stan allowed to like the same secondary?”

Of course Eddie is the type of person who immediately upon sleeping with a poly married man deep dives Google for rules rather than swagger-posts on social media. It’d make a fine Twitter post. Richie would know. He’s posted a handful of pics of Beverly over the last few days, all with reasonable denial for anything romantic, though some of his fans have nailed it in retweets he’ll never reply to.

“You couldn’t find any rules because it doesn’t work like that. We’re not just allowed or not allowed. If you want to hook up once with me and date Stan that’s just dandy.”

Eddie pulls out his phone. After skimming some text too small for Richie to read from his seat, Eddie says out loud, “if I move Astra and the Milky Way to another slot, I’ve got two hours free now.”

“Your place or mine?”

“What?” Eddie asks blankly.

Weird. Richie would have figured him for having a strong opinion, one way or the other. Eddie doesn’t seem the type to ever not have an opinion.

“Mine, then?” Stan and Mike obviously aren’t home to be interrupted.

“There is not a fucking chance I’m going to your house. You seem very nice and all, but so did John Wayne Gacy. If you’ve got some kind of murderclown thing going, I am not going to be the one caught in it all.”

“Whoa, whoa. A, I’m definitely not going to murder you? Because B, that’s some crazy talk you just spewed, are you okay, are you just like this? Also C, whatever, fine, we’ll go to your house, I really don’t care.”

“There’s also no way you’re coming to my apartment. I’m not having a complete stranger knowing my address. Do you know how few pieces of information someone needs before they can successfully steal identities?”

“I have a national fanbase, I think I might get caught pasting my picture into your passport. But okay, chill. Lets go to Venue Seven, the bathroom’s really spacious. Or if you’re the type to think bathroom surfaces are always contaminated, which you kinda seem like you are, like more and more every minute I know you, there”s a few dead end alleys within walking distance.”

“I’m definitely not touching anything in a public bathroom, and saying I _think_ surfaces are bacteria laden implies there might be other thoughts to think, like it’s not pure fact. I am also not getting arrested for public indecency. My field does background checks.”

Eddie is driving him crazy. He wants to rub a socked foot in his face. “Where does Stan fuck you then!”

“At a hotel of course,” Eddie cries, like it’s a sane thing to say and Richie’s the mad one.

“You wanna get a hotel room for a night for a hour long fuck date?” Richie blinks heavily, scrubbing his face with a hand. Didn’t anyone ever tell Stan the old adage don’t fuck crazy? Hasn’t anyone told him either, because he’s absolutely still going to do this neurotic thing. “We’re both paying half, because this is stupid.”

“You care about that? You cheap asshole.”

“Hey, some of us are artists all year round. You on the other hand, there’s no way you don’t have a real job with a real payroll.”

“I’m a risk analyst. I-”

Richie pretends to fall asleep from sheer boredom of the awful job and Eddie starts spluttering. If Bev was here she’d totally high five him.

“Maybe we shouldn’t do this. Probably not healthy to have sex with someone I want to punch in the back of the head.”

“Oh, a donkey punch? Some people would consider that an extremely successful sexcapade.”

Eddie sighs. “I literally hate you. The Eight Oaks hotel is like four blocks from here, any objections?”

“Objections to a hotel brand? Spaghetti, are you the type to leave reviews on Yelp? You are. Oh, you are, you don’t even need to answer. Tell me what your username is, I need to know.”

As Eddie begins to curse him out for the fiftieth time, Richie grins. If he can keep Eddie this irate, things are bound to be pretty wild when they hit the sheets.

***

_“There I am, the next morning, realizing my hookup is totally neurotic. Which possibly I should have guessed from the seven hours of Last Christmas, but hindsight is easier for people without coke bottle glasses, alright? He’s put my clothes in the wash before leaving for work. Let me repeat that. He put his one night stand’s **clothes** in the **wash**. I’m naked as hell, staring the washer in fuckin’ dismay. It’s not the first time I’ve had a particularly shameful walk of shame. There was this time with marshmallows, that’s Trashmouth Talks episode seventy one by the way. But it’s a residential street, an hour before school starts, there are soccer moms pressuring their kids into their cars in every direction. Any of you have the Crossy Roads app? It’s a Crossy Roads of respectable humans, and if I sprint buck ass nude to my house, I’m getting hit by the semi truck of getting goddamn arrested. _

_“Next best choice is to steal clothes. Maybe Knock Knock Ginger them later, maybe catapult them into the sun, depending on how emotionally stable I’m feeling. My own clothes are completely dead to me, of course. My best gay friendship with Stan has hit a snag, in that I’m currently planning to never get within eyeshot of him again._

_“I’m rifling through the dryer, feeling bad for Stan because there’s two distinct sizes of clothes in there. Stanley still hasn’t gotten to the awkward returning stuff stage of a breakup. Or so I’ve heard. I’m lazy, remember? When I leave a boyfriend or girlfriend, anything they have of mine becomes theirs forever, and if they care enough to come to me to get their stuff, I’ll leave it in a plastic bag on the sidewalk. Not. Worth. It._

_“I’m rifling, minding my own business with my petty theft when a man comes into the room. Not Stan. Not the heartbreaking twink, he does not match the description. I freeze, naked as a deer in headlights. And he says, get this: “I’m Stan’s husband, I just made some Shreddies cereal bars, want one for the road?”_

_“I nearly shit myself. Not a great life choice, when you’re not wearing pants.”_

***

The Midnight Cabaret is always a writhing mess of people. It’s not invite only, but you have to know that it’s happening, and the details only leak to the more funky, the more obsessive, the more enthusiastic. Stan and Mike wouldn’t miss it for the world. Richie’s not passing it up either, both because it makes for a great date night -one actually at his body clock’s peak hours- and because later he’s gonna do a highlight reel.

Every play at Fringe is under a strong no reentry policy. You have an urgent call, or you shouldn’t have drunk that whole Slurpee before coming in, or the curry you picked up at the food truck is hitting you, doesn’t matter, the second you pass out the doors you can’t open them again. This is an exception. Everyone who wants to perform has ten minutes. A hard ten minutes, they will cut you off mid sentence, but enough time to show off a solid snippet of your work. There are dozens who want to go up -Midnight Cabaret tends to run ‘til six or seven am -and not even the most open minded patron wants to see every genre, or has a bladder that large. So the doors to the lobby are left open and people drift back and forth with every loud chime of the timer and announcement of who’s up next. 

Richie and Stan wait for Mike’s eleven to midnight play to let out, only a floodlight lightening up the back alley. Richie spends his time examining the wall of taped posters like he hasn’t seen them before, exclaiming about ones that look interesting. Stan, who has both the guide book and the reviews and word of mouth memorised has an opinion about just about anything Richie calls out. It’s a good way to pass time, and before they know it the volunteer is propping open the door and a crowd of people come streaming out. Venue Nine’s air conditioning is set way too high, like stratospheric, so Richie isn’t surprised to see Mike sigh as his goosebumped skin hits the warm summer air. He slides his hand into his man’s, and listens to him happily review the improvised puppet show he just saw as Stan leads them towards Venue One.

They’re about ten minutes late, real time, which is hours late in Fringe line up time. The lobby is full of people drinking, networking, talking about recommendations and unfair reviews and what they’re doing for the rest of the summer. They squeeze their way in -there’s not a chance this number of patrons is not a fire hazard, but what are the chances?- and push through the crowd to see the seats are more than three quarters full too.

They’re mostly quiet for the first two performances, a scene from some serious play about falling in love at a rehab, and a comedy sketch about drawing on paintings in museums. Then Richie’s eyes start wandering as the next performers quickly set up and land on an excellent sight. He bolts to his feet and yells “Beverly! I’d recognise that goatee anywhere!” A few people look at him, but no one bothers to shush him. It’s Cabaret night, etiquette doesn’t much apply here.

In under a minute Bev and Ben have made their way to the eleventh row. There’s two seats open beside Stan, so they throw themselves down moments before the people on stage start singing a comedic song about being pansexual. No one wants to miss the lyrics, so they forego introductions and hellos and rearranging the seating to something that’d make a little more sense, like Bev beside Richie or Ben beside Mike. Instead the couple sit beside the only person they don’t know. And it doesn’t matter. The three songs Laura something-Richie-didn’t-catch sings are hilarious, and true, and Richie can see Stan lean towards Bev and whisper something as Laura spins a lyric about curly hair and Bev whoops out an appreciative yes! Richie knew they’d like each other, he fucking _knew_ they should have been hanging out the whole time. Fringe is over Sunday, and by next Wednesday they better be having a video game night or something. 

“Bill didn’t come?”

“No, he did. He’s trapped by some of the hellspawn actresses from Attic Room, they’re making him explain some of his lyrics to a few people who’d recognised them. He’ll come as soon as he can escape.”

Richie wonders not for the first time how a company that clearly mostly dislikes each other ended up making a musical with an average four and a half stars review. If Richie’d had to work side by side with people that genuinely piss him off, he’d’ve tapped out in a week. Instead they somehow created near perfection. If there’s a lesson in that, he’s not perceptive enough for it. Instead he just wants to shove all these random women into a bonfire, because if they don’t like Bev and Ben they’re clearly wrong. 

By the time Bill comes to join them, the group of friends in front of them have bailed on a ten minute piece about how spite is the most unhealthy emotion a person could have. It’s way too serious for Richie’s tastes, he’d leave to buy a drink too if he wasn’t in the middle of saying his hellos. The triad take the tenth row spots, though immediately twist backwards to keep up the conversation for the six more minutes they have to sit through the emotional guru. 

Maybe an hour of short form theatre and chatter later, Richie hears his name being announced. He’s tempted to run around the audience collecting high fives before heading for the stage, he’s always wanted to feel like a star like that, but he’s only got a few minutes and he doesn’t want to waste them. He saves the urge for just his boyfriends and Bev’s boyfriends, and is pleased to get five hand slaps out of a possible five before he bolts up front and climbs the side stairs. The microphone is warm from a dozen other people holding it, and probably covered with germs. Richie doesn’t care. He’s going to make the equipment _his_ now. He’s going to make this room his eyes tearing, howling, pants pissing _bitch_.

“Now, I’m not saying I want to live in a Scott Pilgrim-esque world. I’ve seen that movie about a hundred times, FYI, but for those of you who didn’t have a roommate obsessed with Michael Cera in the only semester of university you attended, you don’t need a lot of background. Suffice it to say, the manic pixie dream girl the main character wants to hook up with has multiple evil exes that Michael Cera has to defeat through the power of video game references. Now, again, I don’t want this, not in the least because Scott shares a bed with his nympho best friend and never, not a single time, has a threesome? That’s just offensive to my pansexual ass.”

Richie gets a few cheers for that. It’s the Midnight Cabaret at an alt theatre festival, after all, it’s probably hard to get more sex positive than that. He waggles his eyebrows suggestively, and continues.

“That said, it’s fun to think about. One of my current boyfriends -that’s right, that was a plural, come see me at Trashmouth Falls In Love for context- is an accountant. He wears ties, and his professional world falls apart if a single decimal is out of place. I’m not making fun of his job, he could write me out of the mortgage if he wanted to, at least I think he could, that’s how little I know about finance. But you know who knew less? Todd. Todd, my ex, who didn’t use capital letters in his essays because ‘it makes it seem like some letters think they’re better than other letters’. It wasn’t a bad breakup, I didn’t sob off my mascara and burn hardcopy photos I inexplicably had. I’d still like to see Stan stomp him to death with his hooves. Just sayin’.”

Richie finishes his highlight routine mere seconds before the chime goes off dismissing him. People are laughing, and clapping, and cheering, and if that means even five extra tickets sold tomorrow that’s awesome. 

His friends meet him just off stage, at the stairs. They go to the lobby, still laughing at his kickass jokes, and Ben buys him a drink. A vodka and orange, one of the three drinks the limited bar is offering. Richie’s just returning the empty glass to the bucket on the bartop meant for it, when there’s a body pressed against his and a mouth against his ear.

“You still didn’t use the stage,” Eddie comments. So it’s not one of his boyfriends -one of the five- taking advantage of Richie’s post performance dopamine to get him pinned and wanting. The breath on his earlobe isn’t a precursor to another filthy story, or teeth nipping down. It’s just Eddie, because of course he’d be at the Cabaret. He’d probably gnaw off his own wrist, 127 Hours style, before not attending.

“Wanna fight me, bro? Come at me, bro. Take your shirt off to show off your masculinity, bro. Pinch your nips, bro.” So sue him, he gets a little punchy after he gets off stage. Eddie’s just gonna laugh it off anyway.

“Seriously though, you were funny. Want another drink?”

“I always want another drink. In a non-alcoholic way, I’m not that kind of comedian.”

Eddie buys three, because it goes without saying that he’s going to follow Richie back to Stan. Richie’s done his second drink before Eddie even finishes reassuring Stan that they would both absolutely righteously stomp Todd to death with his hooves, only for Bill to offer the dissenting opinion that some verse is better without following the rules of grammar, look at E.E. Cummings. Richie has zero horse in this race, but immensely enjoys all six of them fucking going off at each other. Ben has opinions about poetry, who would have guessed? The argument/discussion/rant is way better, far more entertaining than whatever’s on stage right now, Richie’s sure of it.

Also great? The way all of them are a little closer than they need to be. The sexual tension is impressive, and all over the place. The next time they file into the theatre Mike is sitting behind Ben, leaning forward to give him a neck massage, and Bill sits beside Stan so they can finish a conversation and they’re sharing the armrest, and Richie knows he’s not imagining the way Bev is looking at his lips. 

It’s four am when Richie decides to be a responsible adult. He doesn’t want to. Even saying the phrase in his head kills his soul. Thing is, other events kill his soul too. One of those is fucking bombing his performance tomorrow because he stumbles on a punchline, or can’t remember a bit, or forgets to click the remote. Disappointing Fringe viewers feels different from negative reviews on the podcast app, where any idiot could have just clicked out, or at a club where chances are if a guy starts yelling at you, he came out planning to yell and Richie’s just giving the energy back. Fringe audiences are full of Stans and Mikes and Bens, people who don’t deserve a bad time. He’ll feel fucking guilty if he bombs from something avoidable like sleep deprivation. 

Richie nudges Stan to his left, puts his hand on Mike’s knee on the right. “Can you two Uber when it’s over? I need to crash.”

They shared a car on the way here this morning, seeing a raunchy first slot play about two trashy girls waking up in a park and tracing back their night, The Hangover style. Both of those actresses have been in sketches tonight with other companies, and have been as funny by themselves as they were as a duo. Richie’s glad to have seen them. He hates not knowing what he’ll miss next. But he’s gotta go if he doesn’t wanna be a fuck up, and the faster the better. He’ll be home like fifteen minutes earlier if he can just take the car and doesn’t have to struggle to get an Uber. In situations like these, minutes count.

“Oh thank god.” It’s not the reply Richie’s expecting. He’s hurt for a split second -yeah Eddie’s on Stan’s other side and Richie doesn’t regret that, compersion, baby, but this was his date first- before Stan adds “I’m wiped.”

“Yeah,” Mike agrees, already doing the customary half hovering out of the seat phone and wallet check he does every time they leave somewhere.

“What?” Richie asks dumbly.

“You do realise this like five hours past our bedtime. We’ve been having fun, but we would have left a while ago already, except we didn’t want to disappoint you.”

“I didn’t want to disappoint _you_ ” Richie volleys back. “You guys love this way more than I do.”

“You’re all going?” Bev sounds discontented, which zaps Richie with a little thrill. It’s different coming from her than from Ben, who could probably find a way to regret a potted plant leaving him, the welcoming soul that he is. 

“Normally I wouldn’t. I’m not even tired, this is my middle of the evening. But I’ve got a nooner tomorrow, with a crowd of three hundred, hopefully.” He hasn’t been selling out but he’s been getting close, in the mid two hundreds. No reason to think tomorrow will be any different.

“Thanks for putting that image in my head,” Eddie bitches.

“Oh yeah, Eds, you’re most welcome for the idea of three hundred people gangbanging me,” Richie grins.

Richie can’t help but laugh at the various reactions. Eddie’s talking about how unsanitary and vile that is. Mike’s blushing a little, probably remembering that time he and Stan both plowed him, then did it three more times with an assortment of dildos. Good times. Bev snickers, calling dibs on sloppy two hundred and fifteenths. Bill’s also flush, and what Richie wouldn’t pay to know why. Shit, he doesn’t want to be standing up and leaving now. He’s not even going to fall asleep right away, he’s just going to be torturing himself with the glowing alarm clock, when he could be here, with them, joking. It bites.

“Can I sit with you guys,” Eddie asks, suddenly remembering he only knows Bev and Ben and Bill through a contact point who’s leaving. Does Richie detect some unresolved never made friends in school trauma in his voice? He thinks he does. He’s just not going to bring up childhood trauma at this time. Not knowing what he does now, from an article written in the newspaper’s arts section highlighting musicals this Fringe, in which he learned that Alice and Kearney’s brother is eaten by the wall in Attic Room because Bill’s actual brother Georgie went missing as a child. All Richie’s got is being a braceface, there’s really no comparison.

“O-o-of course,” Bill answers. Richie would have pinned that inclusive dialogue on Ben, but no, it’s Bill. And then after an exchanged look, Ben and Bill are trading spots as Eddie moves to where Mike once was. It’s almost enough to make Richie stay, just to see what plays out. But all his reasons for leaving still apply, with the additional ‘my boyfriends want to go’, so off they go, booking it to the car.

The car they took this morning was Mike’s truck. That doesn’t stop Richie from plucking the ring of keys out of Mike’s pocket. Mike and Stan don’t even argue the point, while normally if it’s the three of them he’d be the last to get the keys. Focus trumps ADHD and Sirius XM surfing, but ADHD trumps incoherently groggy. He’s not in the least tired, really, just knows he’ll be kicking his own ass if he doesn’t try.

“You know that sex party you went to?” Richie asks as a song by KennyHoopla fades out. Apparently it was only the once, in the beginning of Mike and Stan’s poly journey. It seemed like the thing to do at the time, but it wasn’t for them. Really, they’re all outsiders to the kink/poly community, which is what makes finding Bev even more miraculous. 

“Is this about that spoken word rap poetry slam thing? Because I told you-”

“No. It’s just, uh.” There’s no way to phrase this correctly, but he needs to try. “During it did you ever think about starting an orgy?”

“Hell no,” Stan shoots down.

“Okay, noted.” 

Mike’s more gentle. “Why? What’s the sudden delve into history about?”

“I-” Well shit, might as well just say it. What’s the worst that could happen, besides blowing up his domestic partnership and becoming lovelorn and homeless, as well as jobless and destitute if he has nowhere to record. “I kind of like all of them. You two the most, don’t get me wrong. But like, all of them. I kinda want to have a swimming pool of flesh? But I get that that’s weird. Sorry.”

“It’s not that weird,” Mike says. “From what you and Ben have told me about Bev and Bill, the whole triad seems really nice. They were nice tonight.”

“It is kind of a bisexual cliche to want to have sex with all your friends,” Stan says between about three yawns. Now that he’s not stifling them, Richie realises just how many Stan’s been keeping inside. 

“It’s not my fault all my friends are awesome and attractive.” Which is not true in the slightest, in the bigger picture. Richie has like a million Facebook acquaintances and the vast majority are not hot at all. But Stan’s clearly meaning tonight’s group of seven to be his friends, and Richie can’t dispute that. He feels connected to all of them in a way he doesn’t to any of his Facebook friends, and wants to hang out with them on purpose, frequently, not just lacklusterly propose it and do nothing to actually meet.

“We can talk about it, with them. Maybe when it’s not four twenty one in the morning.”

“Aww man, just missed blazing it,” Richie jokes, going for the lowest of fruit. So sue him, he’s already used up his good content for the night.

Stan rolls his eyes. “The last thing you need right now is weed, you’ll be up for hours yet.”

“If it’s sativa. He could have some of the indica, float off to sleep,” Mike corrects.

Richie does not actually want a nighttime bowl, but loves that Mike would prepare him one, line it up beside three wetted and gelled toothbrushes. He loves his boyfriends, so much.

***

_“A top three list of reasons they don’t tell you about why it’s awesome to have two boyfriends, accompanied by relevant music!”_

_Richie plays a clip of Shawn Mendes’ Treat You Better, the chorus angstily belting out **I know I can treat you better, better than he can**. _

_“When you’re in a monogamous relationship and you have a fight, both parties are miserable. You try to bitch to your friends but they don’t get it. They might let you vent, but they weren’t there, they didn’t see how devastatingly hella wrong the offending party was. When you’re poly, sometimes the neutral party is secretly on your side, and you form a super secret alliance of ‘I love you the most because fuck them’. It’s petty, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel good. Plus usually they’re less mad, and help bridge the gap to healthy communication and resolution, but this list isn’t about that. This list is about surprises, and the joy of fuck that guy!_

_Richie points to the tech, and the next song plays. It’s Jekyll and Hyde by Bishop Briggs, the verse being **Sweet and then you're sour, changes by the hour, never know which one I'll taste. Hot and then you're freezing, different every evening. Baby, you drive me insane.** _

_“If this hasn’t been made abundantly clear, I have ADHD and an endless craving for new input. My brain is fucked. Boredom literally hurts. In the past this has resolved in finding the most clinically bipolar significant others I can, someone who’s gonna act different constantly. Turns out dating the unmedicated doesn’t always turn out well. Who could have guessed? Dating two personalities in two different bodies is the same stimulation but with half the mental breakdowns.”_

_The last sound clip comes perfectly on cue. It’s The Unlikely Candidates, one of his current favourite bands. **Your love could start a war, your love, it’s what I’m fighting for. I would die for this revelation, oh your love, your love could start a-** _

_“Being loved by more than one person is like being loved by an army. I wasn’t bullied as much as I could have been. I got lucky, made the right friends, integrated myself with people with power and open enough minds. But I never forgot for a minute that in another life I could have gotten fucked up. I can never forget, when literally any tweet I make gets blasted by the alt right. So there’s something about being loved so much they’re willing to fight against social mores to keep loving you. If you’re loved that much, you must be worthy of it, you must be strong. And as any video game would tell you, empowerment is sexy. Or is it the other way around? How can I, Trashmouth Tozier, have both confidence and bazooka shaped boobs with triangles of fur covering the nipples?”_

***

Despite having scattered days, and performances in three of their cases, everyone agreed to watch Troll Wars from ten fifteen to eleven fifteen. Most of them have gone into Venue Ten, Lilypad Dance Studio, to save seats, while Richie stands waiting outside with Stan’s ticket. Good thing he bought it too, the show’s sold out. In the last days of Fringe everything talked up by line friends or with high reviews is always sold out. Eddie’s already seen it, and recommends it enough to be willing to pay for a second time, which bodes well in Richie’s opinion.

Stan makes it. He’s out of breath from sprinting from his prior play getting out at ten, but he makes it with a few minutes to spare and they both bolt up the emergency stairs turned main entrance to the second floor studio. Mike and Eddie have two seats saved between them, because Eddie is exactly the kind of savage soul to snap _no_ at a dozen people asking if someone’s sitting there, or can they have this seat. Richie considers for a moment sitting beside him, but decides against it. He wants to actually watch this play, and if he sits with Eddie a bunch of combative flirting is going to bubble over and distract him.

It is good. It’s an overhead projector and paper and cellophane shadow play. It’s funny, and visually stunning, and plays with urban fantasy tropes as it’s revealed that 4Chan and Reddit troll assholes are literal green skinned trolls with bones in their hair. As a left wing queer poly comedian Richie gets his fair share of trolling, so the relatability hits a spot for him. But he’s also waiting for it to just be done, so they can get in their cars. Richie. Stan and Mike. Eddie. Bev. Bill and Ben. It’s 2020, everyone has GPS just like everyone has tires, not really an option to opt out of, but Richie doesn’t consult it, just keeps his eyes on the convoy. 

It’s late enough that the neighbourhood is asleep when they park along the street, the other trio’s driveway only big enough for two cars. There’s something about nighttime that always feels illicit. Maybe it’s why Richie’s always been a night owl, there’s just something a little off about him. A little off about all the late night partiers he’s found comrades in arms with, the last decade of his life. Stan and Mike have early morning careers, but they’re here with him, now, and there are four other wide awake souls making their way to the house. Richie hates being alone, but now it feels like he’s found his people. All of his people.

“Last chance to back out,” Richie mutters at the door of Stan’s Impala. “Well, no. You can always say no. Consent is sexy. But last chance before it gets progressively more awkward.”

“We want this just as much as you do, you don’t need to save us. Okay, Rich?” Mike asks sincerely, like if Richie says he’s not, if he says he wants this so much it hurts, actually aches, Mike will wrap him in a hug.

“Yeah, okay,” he answers. 

Every time Richie thinks he’s used to the routine of his life, even lamenting it as his ADHD itches from the lack of new stimulus, he falls in love with Mike or Stan all over again. Mike loves him enough to want other people, and there’s something just so fucking lovely about that.

By the time they’re at the front door, Stan taking the lead by a few steps, Eddie angling in from where he parked far further down the street, their hosts have already entered their house. It’s a little weird to just walk in, but the door is slightly ajar, and wouldn’t it be weirder to ring the doorbell? Just to the right of the foyer is a wide entryway with half drawn curtains. Behind them is a huge walk in closet, with rows of coats and shoes for both genders. There’s even a small ottoman for putting on particularly difficult buckled or zipped pairs. Richie kicks off his ratty ass Converse and feels the slightest bit judged.

Once he’s properly undressed -just his shoes and hoodie, for now- Richie heads deeper into the house. It’s as visually magnificent as the shadow play was earlier. Between Ben’s skills and Bev’s love of fabrics Richie’s not sure he’s ever seen a more aesthetically lush space. 

He finds both the people he wants to compliment, and Bill too, in a living room. Two walls are eggplant shaded, and the massive sectional is an ashy grey. Somehow the room feels like a comfy bean bag chair you can never stop sinking into. Richie loves the home he shares with his boys, but this is a home on a whole new level. Each room he passed had its own solid mood. That’s some artsy shit Richie just doesn’t have inside him.

“This place is fucking great. Absolutely the best choice for an orgy, way better than the hotel idea that was floated.” Is there a bit of taunt in his voice? Maybe. Eddie flipping him off only makes Richie’s heart pitter patter a little.

“Everyone still want to? If not it’s totally cool. We can still be platonic friends. Just chill with a drink and board game instead?”

No one wants to change from what was discussed in the group chat. But it’s also made clear pretty quickly that no one knows where to start, despite all still wanting this. Richie puts on a solid sex playlist: a MrSuicideSheep playlist that’ll be the right combination of energetic and soothing electronica, but no one falls to their knees. Ben keeps making eye contact with people and smiling and it’s just a little too sweet to provoke raunch. Mike pulls off the flannel shirt he’s wearing over a green tank top, but the gun show doesn’t get anyone moving. Bill offers to make drinks for everyone, but the social lubricant angle fails, only Eddie and Stan take him up on it. 

If someone doesn’t do something soon, they’re going to have to break the tension with Netflix, or Youtube, or a conversation about Fringe. Richie likes all those things, but not now, not when he’s almost got what he wanted. So Trashmouth Tozier takes one for the team, and speaks his filthy someday award winning mind.

“I don’t know who all wants to do what with who, but I need one thing. I need to get my hand on Bill’s dick. I’ve been thinking about it since Sunday.”

“I’m n-n-n-not gonna say n-n-no.” Bill answers, as steadfast at being picked out of a crowd as he has been in any other circumstances Richie’s seen him in. 

They meet in the middle of the room for a kiss. Richie never breaks it, not even as he fumbles at Bill’s belt. Richie’s mind is already devising a what kind of an asshole wears a belt to an orgy punchline in his head, can hear the laughter already. In reality though, Richie kind of likes it. It’s like unwrapping something he knows is for him. And he can be a little rough about yanking it out of the loops and tug Bill’s body into his. 

Bill’s cock is a dream in his hand, truly a treasure at the end of a treasure trail. Richie likes it so much that he wants to share, like finding a sweet bug on an elementary school playground, or a great batch of basement brew E. 

“Stan, come here. Come get a load of this equipment.”

Stan rolls his eyes but comes close. Richie takes a step back, grabs his boyfriend's hand and guides it to Bill’s cock. He weaves their fingers together, knuckles spooning, and guides Stan in stroking Bill. Only once Stan’s stepping in closer of his own accord, pressing his lips against Bill’s for the first time, does Richie let go and fall back completely. He loved the foreign tongue in his mouth, loved smelling Stan’s aftershave mixed with Bill’s cologne, but he wants to float around a bit more before deciding on one act to follow to completion. 

The first thing he sees is that Ben and Bev are making out. His hands are gently kneading the breasts Richie knows are oh so sensitive. Her hands are pushing up the back of Ben’s t-shirt. They’re making out because they’re turned on watching their boyfriend hook up with others. That’s so hot. He has no choice but to move to them and tug off Bev’s shirt so Ben can get closer contact, so that Richie can suck on a nipple through the lacy fabric until it really stands out. Simply no choice.

“Do you think you could eat her out as I fingered you?”

They’re filthy words coming from such a cinnamon roll of a human being, to quote the old memes. Richie’s brain nearly short circuits. “Holy hell, man.”

“I just think it would be hot? But if-”

Richie grabs Ben by the collar to pull him closer and make sure he’s truly paying attention. “You misunderstand, sir. I do not disagree. The cock that just twitched in my jeans does not disagree. We need to do this thing, Benjamin. We need to.”

“Do I get a say?” Bev asks, faux curious.

“Aww shit.” He’s not a gross white male comedian, he swears. “Of course, fuck. What do-”

“We need to do this thing,” she repeats, pretending to be as stunned stupid as Richie felt.

Richie expects to be led to a bedroom. Not necessarily the master, he gets how that could cross the line, but a guest room with a good solid bed. Or, knowing Ben, a specially designed sex room. A Sistine Chapel of sex dungeons. Instead Ben tugs him only as far as the tufted black leather ottoman in front of the sectional. One of the side tufts pulls out, as it turns out, turning into storage. And what it’s storing is condoms, lube, expensive looking fleece lined handcuffs, and a vibrator. 

“You sex ninja architect! Is this what you do, just build hidden sex caches all over your houses?” Richie accuses.

Ben laughs, a beautiful sound. “You know furniture, even convenient sex furniture, is not remotely my job?”

Richie smirks back. “Ask me what I think Stan does for a living.”

Bev lays on top of the ottoman, still in a bra and pink floral skirt and red leggings. Richie gets the pleasure of kneeling against one of the still closed drawers and pushing her skirt to her waist before peeling her tights and panties off her silky legs. Her cunt is radiating heat, and the smell is entrancing. He pulls her close, back sliding easily against the leather, and finally gets the chance to taste her. 

As occupied as he is, tongue frantically searching down every trace of wetness, his drive only creating more and more, Ben’s equally on task. He’s got Richie’s jeans shoved down as far as they can go without Richie standing up to remove them, which is a simply unreasonable idea when standing means departing from Bev’s pussy. Ben’s wet fingertips are gentle as they glide up and down his crack, getting him used to the touch of someone not his boyfriends. It’s so gentle it’s a tease in its own way, albeit an extremely different way from Stan and Eddie’s taunting, and Mike and Bev’s laughter. Too nice can get under a person’s defenses too.

Bev’s dripping lips are the first to know that Richie’s been breached. Ben’s slid a finger inside of him, and Richie moans deep into Bev’s flesh. It's not like it’s a new sensation. Richie’s been happily vers for fifteen years now, never really bought into roles. And it’s not just that it’s a new person doing it, because Richie’s had dozens of partners over the years, so many first times. The moan is from the ying yang of it being a good sensation that anyone could perform and he’d love it, against this being Ben, oh, it’s _Ben_ , he thinks he might love him, all of them, thank god this is Ben. His body and his soul are both on fire, and it’s only one finger. So far.

The next time Richie thinks to look over, prompted by a particularly loud moan of Stan’s, the scene has changed significantly. Stan’s still working a slow and careful hand on Bill’s erection. But they’re both not wearing jeans, or underwear, Bill’s delicious cock is exposed for everyone to see. Richie’s going to guess that’s Eddie’s doing, he’s efficient like that. And the man in question is certainly invested in Stan’s pants situation, considering he’s kneeling in front of Stan, sucking his dick. But he’s not doing it alone, no siree. Mike is kneeling behind him, hands in his hair guiding Eddie’s head in his husband’s cock, murmuring into his ear. Mike’s dirty talk game is not the strongest Richie’s come across -he’s obviously the master in this room, Bev coming up second- but Richie’s gotta assume Eddie’s getting off on the kink of _oh yeah this is how to please my husband_. Richie did, the first few times way back in the beginning, before the relationship began to equalise to three partners.

Ben is three fingers deep, and Richie is really beginning to feel like he’s going to be fingered to orgasm, like Ben’s not going to take that final step and fuck him, when Bev speaks up. “Richie?”

Richie lifts his head from its important work to look up at her. “Yeah?”

“I wanna ride your face. Can I?”

“Human bicycle seat at your service, mam,” Richie says, mock humble. It’s enough to get Bev to giggle. Fuck yeah, Richie loves making people laugh during sex. So many people take it way too seriously, when sex should just be fun, and hot, and sometimes gross.

They move to the sectional, then. Ben puts him on his back with his head at the joint between the two sides. It’s dumb hot how Ben can manhandle him. Richie’s big, Richie’s tall. He’s not used to people being stronger than he is, aside from Mike who always seems like he could be the next Atlas and lift the world without struggle. Ben’s got muscles though, and Richie goes where he’s put, stumbling a little with his feet tangled in drooping jeans. It’s a one two punch of arousal then, with Bev carefully positioning herself before descending on his face, and Ben taking the chance to tug his clothing the rest of the way off. He’s drinking pussy juice and he’s balls free to the world, it’s all a little overwhelmingly hot.

Richie’s proud of himself, when Bev comes. He can tell she’s getting close when she begins grinding herself against his chin, clinging to the backrest of the couch to not lose her balance. Then there’s a burst of wetness, and Richie laps it up, wanting to high five himself. He doesn’t stop, because he’s a gentleman. There’s a similarity in sleeping with one woman or two men in that one orgasm does not mean the job is done. Plus maybe Ben will be pushed to the brink if his girlfriend has multiples, and start to actually fuck him.

Before that can happen, the other group breaks the silence. Well, not silence, if you consider the moans and the good beats streaming to the tv from his phone. Lack of conversation, if you will.

“We’re gon-gonna move to the bedroom,” Bill announces, winded. “You want to come with?”

Face still buried in Bev’s pussy, Richie can’t make the obvious ‘oh I think everyone is coming tonight’ joke, and no one else takes the obvious opportunity. Shameful, honestly. 

There’s something truly outrageous about being one in a group of seven mostly naked people walking together to a bedroom. Richie wants to make a joke about it, a shocking statement that’ll get a whole audience to cheer a month from now when it’s workshopped, but he genuinely doesn’t know how to explain this. It’s like camaraderie, and playfulness, and anticipation. It’s giddy lust untainted by the oppression of how society thinks people should fuck. Richie’s not sure he’s ever felt more pure, and he’s not sure what he means by that, and he sure the hell isn’t sure how to make a witty observation about it. 

If each of the rooms in this house has a message statement, the bedroom’s is we are royalty, and the bed is our throne. The colours are red and hues of gold and it doesn’t feel like Gryffindor memorabilia exploded on it, it just feels like Richie should be wearing a crown so peasants can bow to his cock. Except he’s the one bowing. Ben bends him over the left side of the bed as Bev crawls on beside him. Richie is fucking presenting his ass, positioned like this, and a heat burns in his guts. 

Once on the bed, Bev scooches to the edge. Her legs pin his shoulders to the bed, pin his face to her cunt. Using less than half of the bed means there’s enough room for the others to climb onto the right side. Richie’s got Stan and Mike closer than ever, and they can see just how owned by sex he now is. He’s always known he’s an exhibitionist, but this is some above and beyond shit. 

Richie gives a slurping lick or two as Ben gropes him before he gets an idea. He pushes at Bev’s legs to free himself, then bends up just enough to twist and look at the man holding handfuls of his ass. “Ben you did such a good job on me, how about you do Mike now?”

Ben frowns, masking the hopefulness. “You think he’d want?”

“He’s not as ultratop as he looks, trust me. Are you, Mike?” After all, there’s no use in pretending he’s not two feet away and can’t hear this whole conversation. Richie can do this, be the orgy facilitator. Ben will fuck Mike, he’ll probably fuck Bev, depending on the position Bev can maybe keep fingering him as she does, and the other three can do whatever they wanted to move to the bed for.

Except that’s not how it ends up at all. Mike is more than delighted to disengage from his quartet and round the edge of the bed to where Ben is. He actually lines up right beside Richie, their bare hips pressing together. Ben reaches for the bottle of lube Bill’s dropped on the unused pillows at the top of the bed, and rewets his hand for a new person. Richie has no doubts that Mike will coax Ben into going all the way. Whereas Richie has no problem in letting his partners doing what they most want to, some mix of too adventurous and too apathetic most of the time, Mike is always full of clear directions. Bev, too, keeps to Richie’s future projections, letting him keep on licking her even while her boyfriend deserts her.

Where it differs is that Eddie goes for him. “Do better, Tozier, she’s only come once.”

“Are you reviewing me?”

“You told me to branch out, didn’t you? Do better, or let someone show you how.”

“Interesting,” Bev pants. She clearly hasn’t been suffering by Richie’s hand, but maybe she’s got just as much wanderlust as Richie does, and wants to try on some of the others. And Eddie must have an oral fixation, considering this, and earlier, and the hotel on Tuesday. Richie stands up so Bev can twist on the bed towards Eddie. They seem like they could have fun together.

Well, if he’s letting them sixty nine each other to death, and he’s letting Mike lure Ben into boning him, there’s only one place left for Richie to go. On the right side of the bed Bill is sucking Stan off, looking like there’s nowhere else he’d rather be. Maybe Bev’s bullshit fantasy was more realistic than he’d thought. Bodes interestingly on Ben and rope play, the way Bill’s dying to swallow pole.

“Stan. Stan. Staniel. Stop. I want to ride it.” Stan is not listening to him, the selfish cocksucking jerk, so Richie weaves his fingers into Stan’s curly mane and yanks it. He gets a turned on moan. Good. It also gets Stan to stop. Double good. 

“Go blow Eddie as he’s fucking Bev.” Which surprisingly, Eddie’s switched to. Richie wasn’t expecting that. “Get all up in there, lick those inches sliding in and out. She tastes good Stan. I know it’s been even longer for you than me, tasting a woman. But stop blowing Bill. I want him to nail me.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Stan says fondly. But he sits up from where he’s bent over himself at the bottom of the bed, making him the best boyfriend in the world. Richie wants to give him a gold star for sharing. Will Redbubble print custom gold stars that say Good Job Sharing That Cock, or will he have to buy plain ones and use a sharpie?

Richie reaches for the endless ribbon of condoms flung up near the pillows and opens one deftly. Ben kindly passes the lube and for the second time tonight Richie gets to stroke that dick.

“Yeah, your cock just keeps getting better,” Richie informs Bill. It makes Bev giggle, which makes Richie look over at her. 

The four have gotten much closer in the time he’s been harassing Stan and groping Bill. Ben’s hands cup Mike’s torso, holding him up enough that he can swap messy open mouthed kisses with Eddie. It’s the slowest thing Eddie’s got going for him, hands swift on Bev’s scrumptious breasts, and dick rhythmically pistoning into her. He’s getting the g-spot if Richie’s not mistaken, she’s going nuts. Good for them, Richie thinks, and crawls onto Bill’s hairy thighs. 

“I’m glad you like my d-dick,” Bill smirks at him.

“I’m gonna like it more in a second,” Richie replies and repositions himself. He reaches backwards and quickly opens himself with just a little more lube. Richie’s no masochist, there can never be enough lube. 

Yeah, no, he sure the fuck loves Bill’s cock as the head of it pushes into him. Richie sinks down until he’s flush to the base, and until he’s flushed from hairline to knees. He knows he goes red when he’s getting fucked, and he can only hope and pray his lovers find it endearing. Every man’s o-face is trash to someone and treasure to someone else. 

Bev wails through an orgasm, and Eddie doesn’t stop. Not for a second. Impressive. Richie could watch his hips rabbit away forever, watch the way his ass clenches with each thrust. Richie only wishes he was wearing a buttplug, something invasively stretching him open as he manfully fucks Bev. Maybe it’s just Richie -he hasn’t pressed Stan for details over the week, knowing he’s not the type to share like that- but Eddie gives off wild bottom vibes. 

Richie pulls himself up the length of Bill’s cock slowly, like a Drop Of Fear ticking up towards the top. Then he slams down, anything but afraid. Riding isn’t always his favourite position, but tonight he’s hungry, and this is the best way to fulfill his needs.

Stan’s still behind him. If Richie was Stan, he’d be making out with Bill or other!Richie right now, but Stan is apparently content where he is, grabbing his Richie’s ass. Richie’s pretty sure Stan’s just rutting his dick on Bill’s thigh but if it makes him happy Richie would allow way worse than precome skid stains.

If anything, Bev’s third orgasm is louder than her second. It totally drowns out the music for a minute. Richie can’t take his eyes off of them. As soon as Eddie tries for a fourth though, Bev’s reaction changes. “Ugh,” she bats at his chest. “No more. Over sensitive. Done. You can come in me if you don’t move your hips anymore.”

Richie sort of expects Stan to peel away and go help Eddie. Compare dryhumping to any other sex act and it loses. It’s the digestive biscuit of sex; still a cookie, better than no cookie, but never chosen first in an assortment box. Richie even considers offering Eddie sloppy seconds, although it is a little kinky for a first time and based on the revulsion of the gangbang jokes he wouldn’t like it anyway. In the end though it’s Mike that makes the move, pulling Eddie away from Bev and in for another soul searing kiss. Mike rolls off his condom to get skin on skin contact, and Richie can rest safe knowing Eds is in good hands.

Richie’s grown to love the sound of grunting. Mike has a very distinct sex grunt, whether he’s giving or receiving. When Richie hears it he doesn’t have to look over to know he’s close to coming. Except he does look over, still bouncing on Bill with Stan tucked behind him, hands clenching on his ass, because who in their right mind wouldn’t want to see their boyfriend getting plowed? 

It’s a picturesque sight. Eddie's legs are spread wide and dangling off the bed. He’s pinned under Mike's body, except for where room’s been made for a tight fist. They share a sloppy kiss, lips barely making contact and allowing for Mike’s grunts and Eddie’s whimpers. Ben’s sweaty now, working his magic inside Mike. Bev’s watching Ben too, even as she strokes Bill's head affectionately, inner thighs still wet with the way Eddie made her gush. How Richie will ever be able to boil this down to an anecdote, a clip, a sound bite, he doesn’t know.

Body used to Stan’s fingers digging into the curves of his ass, Stan’s sudden action shocks Richie. His hand moves, and he pushes his index finger in beside Bill's dick. Instantly, Richie is done for. The sudden overfull feeling gut punches his orgasm out of Richie and every muscle in his being tightens. He collapses onto Bill with the accompaniment of Bill’s cock pulsing in his ass, condom filling. Apparently muscle contraction does it for the guy. Bev rustles his hair a few times before going back to her boyfriend. Richie’s locks are long enough that they flop back into his eyes immediately, but the attempt is kind. Meaningful.

Seconds after Richie comes, Mike spends himself with one last grunt. It must be what conscientious lover Ben was waiting for, because no more than five thrusts later and Ben’s letting out a long wispy sigh and dropping his forehead onto the nape of Mike’s neck. It’s a gesture of connection, as sweet as the man himself. Richie’s joyous for Mike.

With almost everyone finished off, the mattress arrangements begin to change. Bill gently pulls out and pushes Richie off himself so he can tie off his condom then sit up against the lush padded headboard. Before Richie can get too skin hungry, Bill murmurs at him to come here, and pulls him into his arms. Bev tucks in beside Bill, resting her head on his shoulder. Ben and Mike too, settle at the top of the bed, or as close to the top as there’s room for. Ben’s hand slips into Bev’s as automatically as some people breathe, and Richie would wonder if they’re already settling back into the original triads, except Ben’s other hand is linked with Mike’s. 

Everyone else crowding at the top gives Eddie and Stan their own space at the bottom of the bed. Space they immediately use with Eddie pushing Stan down to the sheets. They all get front row seats to Eddie sucking Stan to completion, grinding his own cock against the give of the pillowtop mattress. Yep, definitely an oral fixation, Richie called it. Not that he’s complaining. Stan deserves the best blowjobs in the land. Richie wonders who’s better at it, Bill or Eddie, but it doesn’t seem like the kind of question you ask in front of everyone. Richie’ll save it for the next time he’s alone in bed with Stan, dirty talking him through some mutual masturbation. 

“Anyone need some water,” Ben asks, the considerate motherfucker he is. The answer being no, obviously, because who cares about water when they could be cuddling in the afterglow? All Richie wants is for everyone to extend their crossed legs, for Stan and Eddie to join them up here, maybe laying on top of someone if there’s no room from side to side, and for everyone to bask in the sweaty come and lube smeared warmth.

Eddie actually requests a water. And Ben actually goes to retrieve it, because he’s not the kind of man to tell people to fuck off with their stupid tasks. It’s like the first thing Richie ever learned about Ben. He shouldn’t be surprised, but it’s still fucking madness.

Eddie must be able to see Richie’s disbelief, because as Ben leaves the room he starts to justify himself. “The body can get very dehydrated after sex and dehydration can lead to a host of bad outcomes, like-”

“Wow, you’re really just like this all the time, huh.” Richie thought maybe the hotel tryst was half nerves of fucking a poly couple without etiquette cues, but no one has ever set out rules of an orgy and he’s still doing this.

“We’ve had sex twice, moron, how are you still clueless about who I am?”

“I’m sorry, did I make you take a psychology test in the elevator at the hotel?”

“B-Both of you, chill,” Bill commands. 

“Kiss and make up?” Bev suggests, half joking. Richie feels more like shoving his stinky foot in Eddie's face. He’ll pass at the moment. 

“Oh, okay, no?” Bev knee walks towards to press her mouth onto Eddie's come stained one. Seconds later she’s putting her lips on Richie’s. Richie knows he must be imagining tasting the layers of other people, but it’s a good daydream. 

“There,” she says, satisfied. “Kiss and make up transmitted by proxy.”

“You’re a fucking dork, Marsh. Your secret’s out,” Richie says loftily.

“What secret,” Ben asks, reentering with a six pack of water because he’s just like that.

“Beverly Marsh is a dork,” Richie informs him.

“Oh, I already knew that.” Ben’s throwing himself onto the bed beside Eddie, spooning him, and it’s all the motivation Richie needs to tug Stan up between his legs so he and Bill and Stan are a trio of spoons. It’s not quite packing in like sardines in a line, but it’s still lovely to be held and hold at the same time.

Speaking of lovely, he’d like to lay the definitive proof that the decision they came to in the group chat was a good choice. No one’s actually high fived each other yet, physically or metaphorically, and that’s just wrong. This is some prime high five shit. “Holy shit, that was great. Anyone wanna pop a Viagra and do it again in twenty minutes?”

The explosion of responses is like music to Richie’s ears. He doesn’t even care what goes down next, just richly enjoys an afterglow full of scathing commentary and hmmms of potential and giddy laughter. It’s so good. They're so smart to be doing this, to have found each other, to have pushed past the limits of normal. It’s so _good_. 

***

_“So it’s Christmas, our one year anniversary. Stan doesn’t give a shit.” Break for chuckles, then Richie clarifies. “About Christmas. What with being Jewish and all._

_“Oh, side note, because I have the misfortune of knowing you never know when a Republican secretly lurks. If you’ve sat through forty five minutes of some podcaster slut working his way up to polyamory and the sudden knowledge that one boyfriend is Jewish and one is black- oh yeah, surprise! Mike is black! If that’s what gets your hackles up about me going too far? If you’re that Republican Karen, feel free to get the fuck out of my audience and go die in a gasoline fire. And if you’re not a garbage person, feel free to punch a nazi. Like just the next one you see. I know it’s an old meme, but it’s a good one for a reason._

_“But back to the Christmas crisis. Stan’s doesn’t have a horse in the face, but Mike and I have family that want to see us. You know that age old, relationship dooming question? You know, how soon is too soon to introduce a partner to family? That shit gets even more intense when there’s three of you._

_“So I do what any sane and rational millennial would do. I start livetweeting my relatives' reactions as they realise one by one that cousin Richie the fuckup didn’t bring friends to crash the Christmas Eve party. Oh, no, he brought multiple boyfriends. Here are a few of the best.”_

_Richie raises his remote and clicks to the next slide._

***

Stan and Mike’s technique for finale Sunday is to initially keep the schedule blank. That way if any abrupt changes on other days, for whatever reason, displace something important there’s an open day to dedicate to seeing that, with enough line up time to guarantee it. This year it’s easy for them both. Mike needs to see Focal Point at Venue Two, Stan needs to see thought. eye. wood. at Venue Seven, and then at seven thirty they’re all meeting to see Secrets To Keep, an improv troupe. Stan and Bev have both already seen them, but that’s the nice thing about improv, you could see all eight performances and get eight different shows. 

Afterwards they sit in the grass at the free outdoor stage and do their best to ignore the misery coming from on stage. The performers are eldritch abominations, Richie swears, complex beings who don’t understand human emotions and don’t get that being spitefully ignored by a few dozen people only here as overflow from the food trucks should be soul crushing, should be enough to run off the stage hyperventilating. Walking on stage and performing to dead silence is like a recurring nightmare of Richie’s. 

Being here might not be the best location, but Richie isn’t ready to go home yet, and he knows they all feel the same. Fringe is magical, and no one ever wants to leave Narnia. They might be magical too, and Richie’s not ready to test if their bond breaks out of the liminal space that is Fringe. Eventually it’s going to get dark, and Stan and Mike have to work tomorrow, but Richie doesn’t want to think about that yet. He’s not ready for the sun to set.

“You gonna write a monologue about this for next year?” Bill tilts his head more, so he’s looking directly up Richie’s nostrils from his position on Richie’s lap. He’s been writing notes in Google Docs for the last fifteen minutes, about what Richie doesn’t know. Bev’s let them know not to bug him about it, he doesn’t like to talk about works in progress.

Richie shoots back, “you gonna write a musical about this?” Because he can listen to advice, but that doesn’t mean he needs to accept it.

“Oh yeah,” Bill laughs. “The first song will be Now I Have Three Partners Who Hate Cheese.”

“Lactose intolerance is a very serious issue!” Eddie exclaims.

“Nice. I’m gonna title my set Even Trashmouth Can’t Spread His Legs That Wide.”

“I highly doubt any of your fans will think you’ve got five dicks in you at a time,” Stan says.

“Hey! Six, you sexist! Who’s saying Bev can’t rock an awesome strap?”

“Oh, she can,” Bill says without looking up from his phone. Ben’s fuchsia blush really seconds the motion.

“I learn new things about you every day,” Richie says in awe.

“We’ve known each other two weeks, I should hope the well isn’t dry yet.”

“But, really. Your partners? Is that what this is?” Eddie frets, honing in on Bill’s word choice. Richie would like to poke fun, but underneath it all he’s worried too. Richie feels these people deep down inside his soul, like pylons driven into the earth, but the structure of it is still flimsy. It would be so easy to let it dissolve, go back to the established triads and chalk it up to a summer fling. And if it hurts Richie to think about, at least he’d still have Mike and Stan. Eddie would have no one.

“We’re, we’re gonna keep hanging out, right? Even if we have to work, there’s weekends,” Eddie continues.

“I mean, we’re going to Boulder in three weeks, it’s the other lottery we made it in. But before that, yes? I hope?” Ben stammers.

Richie shrugs. “I can come to Boulder. What about you, Eds?”

“I have a real job, not talking to people on the internet. No, I can’t come to Boulder in three weeks!”

“I bet you have like eight hundred days of overtime accumulation you don’t take. I know Stan and Mike could make it for a three day weekend. Four, if they ‘call in sick’ on Monday.”

“Logically I know this is a stupid idea, and if my boss rejects my call in and I still can’t come in because I’m in a different state I’m fucked, but I’m about to pull out my phone and check American Airlines,” Stan says.

“We’re taking Delta,” Bev suggests. “I dunno how much it costs now, but it was pretty cheap when we booked it.”

Richie wriggles on the grass with excitement. “Are we really doing this? Dropping everything to go to Boulder Fringe together?”

“I’ve always wanted to travel,” Mike says. “I think we are.”

“You guys, this is so irresponsible,” Eddie starts. The tone says so much more than the words though. The tone says he’s putting up a fight because he has to, and he neither expects to nor wants to change the group’s mind.

Richie sighs, his lungs bursting with love. This new set of play partners might be the best thing that’s ever happened to him. He really needs to thank God, or Satan, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or whoever it is that says it’s turtles on top of turtles, for giving him this.

***

_An archivist, an accountant, a playwright, an actress, an architect, a risk analyst and a podcaster walk into a bar. Wait, did I say bar? I meant bedroom._

**Author's Note:**

> Throughout the fic I've referenced a bunch of real Fringe artists. If any of them sound interesting, here's links for details:
> 
> -I imagine Richie has a career much like Graham Clark. Big name podcaster, active Twitter base: [his Twitter](https://twitter.com/grahamclark?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)  
> -That said, the stick figure accompaniment scene is the style of my favourite Fringer in the world. [ J D Renaud's Twitter](https://twitter.com/jdrenaud).  
> -Like Richie says, both Martin Dockery and Mike Delamont are Fringe staples, capable of selling out entire runs, thousands of tickets, just by showing up. [Martin Dockery's hilarious latest monologue](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS5i2y1xyaQ). [A clip of Mike's most famous character work](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AnEIn9CIJA).  
> -Mind Of A Snail does gorgeous [projector work](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sHXcwCnKC4)  
> -Wonderheads is fantastic physical theatre. [A short of theirs.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paQvc_d-pYc)  
> -Shelby Bond's entire One Man series is great. I can't find any clips of that on Youtube, but here's [a short of his](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC4a0PfC3bc)


End file.
